A Fish Out Of Water
by Anotherjaneway
Summary: Station 51 gets wet working with the Baywatch lifeguards of Malibu. A myth almost drowns one of the guards but a miracle, saves him. Chris DeSoto learns Baywatch rescue skills.


This is a text version of the original still airing imaged, music soundtracked story.

Emergency Theater Live, Episode Eighteen

18. A Fish Out Of Water Season Three - Episode 18 Short summary-  
Station 51 gets wet working with the Baywatch lifeguards of Malibu.  
A myth almost drowns one of the guards but a miracle, saves him.  
Chris DeSoto learns Baywatch rescue skills.

****WARNING**** The long summary to come is very story spoiling and will take away plot surprises if you read it now before reading the longer story below it.

Decide now if you want to read this episode's detailed summary before doing so.

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Long Summary-  
A little girl in a daycare center suffers a seizure. Squad 51 responds.  
Across town, a beach cop, Garner Ellerbee, of Baywatch, begins a patrol. Several Baywatch lifeguards get wrapped up in rescues, reports of an escaped naval dolphin and a burglar stealing stolen artifacts from a museum exhibit about the missing continent of Atlantis. One of the lifeguards thinks he sees a mermaid swimming in the surf on the day Station 51 offers to teach the lifeguard scout children CPR and nearly drowns from heatstroke.  
Roy and Johnny effect his rescue along with the County Baywatch Lifeguards.  
The head lifeguard lieutenant Mitch Buchanon's son, Hobie, finds the missing trained dolphin and a mysterious paraplegic woman ex-naval animal trainer who seems to know the skillful mammal. Policeman Vince Howard and a lifeguard named Craig Pomeroy catch the beach crook after a vehicle chase that turns into another surf rescue. Hobie and Roy's son Chris, befriend the little seizure girl from the daycare center who's attending junior lifeguards. They get into trouble on a stony pier when an oil leak from an oceanic drainage pipe catches on fire. Both the Station 51 gang and Baywatch operations crews mount a rescue of the children and the paralyzed woman trainer who is discovered to be the little daycare girl's mother, riding the back of the escaped dolphin. Later, at the zoo, Hobie and Chris muse over missing the navy returned dolphin while Roy and Johnny wonder what it would be like to become Baywatch lifeguards.

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The Story Unfolds...

Season Three, Episode Eighteen..

A Fish Out Of Water Debut Launch: February 1st, 2005.

From: "Maggie H" Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 2:50 pm Subject: An Angel's Fate

"Carly?"

Bright blue eyes gazed up into Julie Hanson's face, and cheeks bloomed with a smile.

"Carly, are you ready for lunch?" The teacher pointed to the small group of students already waiting with their assistant, Lisa, at the door.

"I'm ready for lunch, Mrs. Hanson?" The girl answered, her words correct, but her tone imitating her teacher's question. She stood from the rocking chair, where she had been sitting after finishing a lesson with Julie. "I'm ready for lunch!" This time the intonation was perfect. Carly trailed behind the group as they exited the classroom, repeating to herself, "I'm ready for lunch, Mrs. Hanson. I'm ready for lunch, Mrs. Hanson."

As Julie followed the four students down the corridor towards the cafeteria, she watched Carly, especially, thinking how nice it was to finally have her back. The girl had had a rough time over the holidays and had missed the first two weeks of school. Like her three middle school classmates, Carly had autism, but unlike the others, she also had a seizure disorder and took a combination of medicines to stable her moods and prevent her seizures. Lately, her medicines had not been working quite right. She had had several explosive episodes, putting holes in the wall in the classroom and the hallway, as well as a fair share at home. Thus, the doctors had placed her in the hospital to try to figure out a better combination of medications.

After being back for a little over a week, now, things had been good, Julie reflected. Her mood has been much more stable;  
although, the new meds tended to make her sleepy in the afternoons.  
That, at least, they could work through by taking frequent, short walks.

Lunch was uneventful, and the group returned to the small, self-  
contained classroom, where they would work on leisure skills by playing a group game, after a short break. Carly's favorite break activity was a wooden puzzle of the United States. She could do it repeatedly without getting tired of it and she could do it in about two minutes flat, when she wanted to. Today, as she sat down at her desk, though, her eyelids drooped a bit.

*Better watch her,* thought Julie. *She's got that sleepy look again.* She was usually fine up until lunch. But then she would practically nod off on her feet. She gazed at the girl as she slowly picked up the puzzle pieces, examining each, tilting it left,  
then right, before placing onto the puzzle board. Soft blond hair fell about her shoulders, and Julie could see that Carly was smiling slightly and humming to herself. For all the world, she looked like any other pretty 12 year old.

The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. She glanced around to see Lisa busy with another student and moved to her desk to pick up the receiver. A question from the counselor. It took only a few minutes.

When Julie turned back around to check on Carly, she noticed that her back was slumped slightly. ::Dozing already,:: the teacher thought to herself as she placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Carly, wake up," she said firmly.

The girl did not move.

Julie felt her heart beat accelerate as she took a closer look.  
Carly sat, eyes practically closed, Tennessee gripped between her fingers and poised over its location on the puzzle board.  
"Carly," she said, "open your eyes. We don't sleep in middle school."

The girl blinked and murmured something.

"Let's put the pieces in together," Julie said, guiding Tennessee to its spot. Carly glanced at her teacher, but then gaze away, her eyes staring off at nothing.

Julie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Carly, look at me," she said firmly.

The girl did not move. And there was no mistaking the rigid lock to her eyes as they gazed off to her left. Her lips hung open and drool pooled at the corner.

"Lisa!" Julie stood upright and motioned to her assistant.  
"Call the fire department, and then get the nurse! Carly's having a seizure!"  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos : None.

*  
From : Pam Sent : Sunday, February 6, 2005 10:47 PM Subject : Chapter 2 Lisa ran and called the fire dept.

::L.A. Fire Dept. What is your emergency?::

"L.A. School for Learning Disability. A child is having a seizure." Lisa stayed as calm as she could knowing Carly needed her to be so. After she gave the address to the dispatcher, she hung up.

The new dispatcher, training with Sam Lanier, placed the call to the units needed.

::L.A. RESCUE 51-POSSIBLE SEIZURE. L.A. SCHOOL OF VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION 1157 CROSSWIND ROAD. ELEVEN FIVE SEVEN CROSSWIND ROAD, CROSS STREET CARSON. DRIVE TIMEOUT: 0722. SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT HAS BEEN DISPATCHED TO YOUR LOCATION.

Roy responded from the rescue squad. "Rescue 51,KMG 365." Johnny wrote the address as Roy replaced the mic into its cradle and began giving directions to the school, avoiding the detours caused by road work from a broken water pipe under the street they would normally travel.

"10 calls and we haven't been on shift for 5 hours; man looks like the full moon curse is early this time." Roy could always tell if Johnny's superstitious side was showing-especially if he saw a black cat...something that really caused a miniature rant to begin.

"It's not that, and I know it, it's this abnormal heat wave we're having." Roy was glad "The Phantom" had yet to play a joke on Johnny...opps "Pigeon" as Chet called him.

"Turn here, should be on the right." Both saw the school and were met at the door by the principal and Vince Howard.

"It's Carly, she's had a seizure in class. This way!" She began to run with the medics and officer as they went towards the classroom in question.

Soon as they were inside, they saw a child laying on the floor and furniture moved away from her. Several of the children were swiftly moved into another classroom soon as Lisa and Ms. Hanson saw what was happening, and to minimize the possible trauma of seeing this happen to a friend; also giving the men room to work swiftly.

"Sweetheart, can you open your eyes for me?" Johnny knelt beside her and began to take her vitals.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From : Cory Anda Sent : Wednesday, February 9, 2005 5:25 AM Subject : The Other Rescue Service

Dawn was just past. The sea was choppy. It sucked greedily at the slender kelp strands shimmering in the warm morning sunlight while fleeing tendrils of fog still drifted over the newly reborn shoreline. The restless surf almost drowned out the sound of vehicle navigating the beach. C.B. hails and responses punctuated the endless song of the waves.

Garner Ellerbee was on patrol.

Garner looked like any other cop wearing a light blue polo shirt enblazoned with an iron on "L.A. County Police Department" badge. His three wheeler bike was similarly marked in white and gold paint. There, the comparison to regular police dress ended.  
Garner's ebony legs poked naked out of navy Bermuda shorts and into navy knee socks and high top Nikes. His dark face and sharp crew cut contrasted with his mirrored shades and the soft blue of the sky. Garner scoped the shore up and down the long line of light blue lifeguard towers running north and south.

They would be coming soon. A lot of them.

The stocky black man chuckled to himself. It was going to be another beautiful June day in southern California. Every day for the past twelve years, Garner made this morning survey of his sandy beat before the tide of public people came. His department worked in close conjunction with the mammoth lifeguarding operation of the Coast Guard network.

Garner's beach was home to its headquarters, a high, gray planked building at the very midway point of an eight mile section of sand declared Roy Rogers State Park along the one way glass windows cocooned the tip two stories and a single, white sign adorned its seaside face, "Baywatch Headquarters" it said in neon orange blocking. The watch windows were masking the hubbub of activity within.

Garner soon noticed a fleet of yellow beach patrol trucks filing out of the base's garage bay. His eyes drew seaward. Already, the bright yellow rescue boat cruised a quarter of a mile out, covering the off reef waters with its usual visual surveillance. He waved to the vessel and was rewarded with an enthusiastic return of greeting.

Garner knew them all. He knew every lifeguard team on assignment personally. He hefted and thumbed the C.B. mike, "Mornin' to each and everyone of you lycra clad bodies. Ready for some fun in the sun today? Garner stats coming your way...."

The radio suffered a multitude of groans and moans from boat and trucks from all the lifeguards within them.

"Surf's swell is lovely with 4 to 6 foot crests and the in-reef water temp is steady at seventy two. Headcount; Beaches are clear. Truck seven, you have four or five cart people in the tunnel between towers 14 and 15. I rate them a mild headache on the nuisance scale. They'll be no trouble for your flockers. Hey, hey,.. I almost forgot! The San Pedro gang's on vacation in the beautifully rustic city jail sunshine. Aren't we lucky ducks?"

Some hoots and cheers kissed his ears. "That about wraps it. " Garner went on, "I hope happy, uneventful guarding fills your day."

A tenor voice piped on line, "Hey, Garner! Aren't you forgetting something?"

Garner Ellerbe felt about two dozen binoculars target him. "Whaa? Oh yeah." He got off his bike seat stretching the mike's cord behind him. With his back to his motorcycle, he whirled the mike in the air like a lasso, grumbling to himself. He bit his lip in concentration. At a crucial point, he let go...

The mike arched high, bounced once off of the black leather seat and up again. The mike tail spinned and neatly hung itself up on its own dash spigot clip. Snick!

A thunder of applause, whistles and hoots drifted across beach and water and from the radio.

Garner bowed graciously. Then he sat on his trusted "chariot" to had lost count of exactly how many water rescues, drug busts, gang fights and missing craft calls he had under his belt. The burly cop only knew that a lot of his reports or testimonies proved to be the glue of making his criminal cases stick. A few of them had even become his closest friends.

The C.B. radio came alive in excited voice, "Way to hang it, Garner! What was that? Twentieth in a row?"

Garner smiled. It was Jill Riley, a veteran Lifeguard of thirty. He could almost see her strikingly fresh smirk and flaxen ponytail. "Yeah.." he answered her. "Something like that. Where are you posted today?"

"Backside rim, Dmn it all. If you are here in three, maybe I'll still have enough chocolate eclairs left for you...."

"Shush, woman! My gut heard that. Don't you know I'm on a diet?!"

Jill answered knowingly, "Sure I do. That's why I'm having so much fun trying to break it."

"You demoness..!" he moaned.

"Weakling pawn!" she taunted, "Try not to drool on your shirt."

Click.

Garner chuckled again, patting his stomach. That shrewd woman would be the death of him sooner or later. He headed out to her tower with a chorus of seabirds smoking over his head.

It was going to be a beautiful day indeed.

-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  
South, at the very edge of the public beach, was Jill Riley's vision of h*ll.

Right next to her assigned tower was the exclusively private, Billingsly's Club. Its peach adobe grounds and Queen's palms smacked of the very eminence of money.

The beach there was filled with neat white metal tables and chairs, shadowed under black and white striped umbrellas. An outdoor bar nestled in between them on an island of black marble tiles.  
Closest to the water was a decrepit, sun-peeled watch chair of white wood seven feet in height.

Jill groaned aloud at the sight of it for the chair belonged to the club's very own, personal, Australian lifeguard.

"Trevor Cole.." she said aloud. The name was an oath in her mouth. The man was attractive enough with his short, curly blond locks and laughing green eyes,....but,.. Jill groaned again, even louder. The fact that he was short was no comfort. The man was a walking gonad.

Trevor charmed every pretty thing on the beach with his greek physique and Aussie drawl. Teenaged girls would fake a sprain in order to have him pay attention to them. And he gladly embraced them all,  
literally. Jill had even heard Cole had had one or two statutory rape charges in his past; it was why the county would not let him become a lifeguard on the public beach.

Jill looked at her watch. It was nine o'clock. There was already a crowd of swimmers in her water...and his.... She looked about..

No Trevor.

Jill sighed and shifted her chair to give herself a clear view of the club's ocean front as well as the county's area waters.

"Mornin babe? Missed me?" a colorful voice asked.

Jill turned. It was him. She didn't miss a beat. "Can't say that I did. I'm sure THEY missed you." She indicated the people wading in front of his watch chair.

Trevor ignored the barb, "My..my..my. Don't you look lovely in a red bathing suit."

Jill regarded Trevor's black and white striped boxers with a grimace, 'New dress code, eh. Can't clash with the umbrellas now can we?"

Trevor's smile never wavered, "How about dinner tonight? A little wine.. a little music...."

"..A little PEACE.." she countered, "You've been trying to ask me out for over two months. Give it up, Trevor. I'm not interested." Jill put on her sunglasses and looked out to sea.

Trevor laughed and strode over to his chair and climbed up into it. He made a big show of flexing all of his visible muscles noisily, affording Jill a sideways glance every now and then. He caught her looking at him stretching his deltoids. "I know you want me. So why don't you just face the facts..?"

Jill gave him a double take in utter disbelief and gagged in disgust. She promptly picked up her director's chair and put a whole tower wall and two hanging beach towels between herself and Trevor Cole. "This is definitely the tower assignment from H*ll...." she muttered.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Across town, many miles from the ocean, a museum got a nasty surprise. It was missing a crate of artifacts for its new exhibit, Atlantis, Myth or Fact?

The curator turned on the UPS delivery man in a barely contained fury,"Why does this always happen?! Whenever we pay for a rush in advance, we always get shortended! This is the third time this month, now,... I want you.. to go back to base...and tell your superiors that they have two days to find it or else they are going to be minus one very big client!"

The man snapped to attention without thinking, "Yessir!" He turned on his heels and left.

The curator took a deep breath and regarded his now cold pasta rigoletto and rumpled cot in one corner of the receiving alcove. He put a hand to his sweat drenched brow,  
"I have to stop living like this.."

Resigned to his fate, he turned back to his shipping order.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "Boy.. I could live like this forever.."

Eddie Kramer leaned out over the west rail of tower 34. Water kissed sunlight glinted from the ocean and dappled his tanned face and chest with vivid gold sparklets, "This is where I belong. Right here. In the sun. Right now." he thought with smug satisfaction. It was an easy day. Eddie had only had to go out to warn two little boys away from the pier's barnacle encrusted pilings. And that had been three hours ago. He bent over and pulled a cold St. Croix with lemon out of his cooler and tore the cap off with a twist. Its cool wet iced his throat with a silky caress all of the way down into his stomach. He shivered with a delicious chill, "Ooo.. that hits the spot."

Two girls lounging under the shadowing ramp giggled at his antics. Eddie smiled and politely ignored their idle interest. Secretly, he reveled in it. To his ears, that sound made the usual beach babble dance. Life was definitely going easy on Eddie "Buns" Kramer these days. It hadn't always been that way.

It had taken Eddie most of his life to get the inner city Philadelphia rebel out of his system. Eddie was an ex-con. As a teen, he found himself thrown in prison for what he thought was a healthy venting of steam built up from living in a shattered home.

At nineteen, Eddie Kramer was going nowhere. He was nobody.

Eventually, he learned that his old man had taken up with prostitutes and drug dealers and his world became an endless stream of failed suicide attempts. When Eddie was released from prison, he was ordered to do community service. The only thing that appealed to him even slightly was working at the municipal public pool. He chose it solely for the fact that it was out of doors. He figured he had spent too much time behind far too many locked doors as of late.

Once there, Eddie's life took an unexpected turn. The pool was a place of ...magic. People from all walks of life untouched by abuse sought refuge in its cool waters. They did nothing but screech and splash. A few just floated on their fat. But they were happy...

Slowly, as a lifeguard, a beaten down half Chicano, half German kid became a true guardianover their long hours of liquidy delight. Eddie learned no misery could ever exist for long in that warm crystalline blue. Some days, burnt red from the sun and stinking of chlorine, all he wanted to do was quit and never come back.

But he didn't, because finally, Eddie Kramer had become.....somebody.

Eddie Kramer sighed contentedly and carefully sighted his target with his frigid bottle of ice water. He flicked a wrist and casually sent an icy stream squarely down the center of a tawny back. A high pitched screech rewarded his efforts.

Shauni McLane sat bolt upright barely securing the ties of her sodden halter top,"Eddie Kramer! That was the most....low down... rotten sleazy trick you have ever pulled!"

The accuse just snickered from behind his binoculars. It was fun pulling a fast one on a fellow rookie. Eddie scoffed and just smiled some more. He liked what he saw. Shauni was a real looker; she was an ex-model gone athletic. Her hair never ceased to fascinate him. It was platinum and was always twisted in a french braid in defense against the sea winds.

Best of all, her eyes were light filled, with the warmest shade of the purest crystalline blue.

"That was nasty and you know it." Shauni breathed, gasping from the chilling river still running into her shorts.

"Oh yeah?" came a new voice from the tower. Craig Pomeroy stepped outside the door carrying a director's chair under one arm, "So's sunbathing half naked for all the eligible bachelors on muscle beach to see right in front of your fiance.."

Shauni's jaw dropped in utter astonishment, "Craig, I can't believe you said that!" She made sure her sodden towel she was shaking out flung wet sand all over the pair of them.

Eddie reached down over the top rail of the deck and caught her in an affectionate bearhug, "He's right darlin'.. You've got me insanely jealous of every man who merely flicks a tiny muscle at you." He smooched her lips dramatically.

Craig smirked, "You're gonna haveta get used to it, Eddie. It's part of the package that goes along with one of these.." He waggled the finger tht held a wedding band significantly.

Eddie cocked his maned head, "Is that so?...." he leaned farther back on his chair's legs, "Well,....maybe I should.  
take it BACK!" He charged Shauni down the angled ramp grabbing for her engagement ring.

She shrieked in mock fear, "No you don't! No way am I ever going to part with this! I've had you on my line long enough, " she grew soft and let herself be captured, "And... I'm not ever going to let you go..."

"Oooo , that sounds so romantic.." Eddie crooned. They kissed.

Craig smacked his forehead and looked skyward, "I can't believe these two were voted the most professional lifeguard team of the summer's rookie crop, I mean looked at you ... All gritty and smoochy.. Eeooww.. You are definitely behaving like ....juveniles...I'll have you know.."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  
A raw blob of hamburger sailed through the air and plopped with a wet splat into the frying pan."And he SCOORRREEESS!! Yes! Hobie Buchannon is breaking hearts all over the basketball court tonight, folks. That's two for O, dad. Go for it."

Mitch Buchannon smoothed his brown touseled hair and flashed a withering look at his eleven year old son, "Now you're a heartbreaker and Wilt Chamberlain? Well, prepare to eat....my.  
dust...."

Hobie planted his brown eyes into the most doleful expression he could muster, "Dad, do you know how ridiculous a thirty seven year old man looks balling up a chopped up wad of slimy cow guts into a snowball?"

Mitch tried to ignore the innocent comment and failed at the last second. His ball of hamburger decorated the kitchen window in lovely strings of meaty gore.

"Got ya!" the boy smirked.

"No fair psyching out the competition!" Mitch laughed as he pinned Hobie into a headlock and messed up his blond hair. Mitch's hazel eyes reflected Hobie's energy and love of fun.

The petite boy broke free of the hold and plunked himself down into a dining room chair in front of a food laden table, "Rule number nine: No horseplay at the supper table unless you can get away with it. Dad, your elbow twitched that time."

"No it didn't."

"Yes it did." Hobie reminded him again. "Same as last week."

"No way..." Mitch said dishing up a serving of potatoes onto his plate, "I had everything under perfect, " he thunked another scoop of mashies onto his platter, "control.."

Hobie pounced, "So why'd you miss?"

Mitch regarded his son over Sports Illustrated, "Smart Alec. Aren't you going to be late for Junior Lifeguards today?"

Hobie rolled his brown eyes, "Dad, as a lieutenant at work, aren't you supposed to know when programs like junior life saving, end for the week? Eddie called here last night to remind you."

Mitch Buchannon laughed to himself, thinking.

Lieutenant, he thought. Newly promoted, kicked out of thongs and shorts for a desk and phone. Was it all worth it? Was it worth missing all of the action as an ex-beach guard? Mitch glanced over to a framed eight by ten of Jill Riley, Garner Ellerbee, Eddie Kramer, Shauni McLane, and a few others in formal lifeguard uniform, all pouring champagne over his head from their bottles.

They sure threw him a good party when they'd heard the news.

Still, being in charge of Baywatch Operations was fascinating.  
Mitch was the one who handled tower and boat assignments and coordinated water rescues. It was a far cry from just watching water for ten hours a day. And two weeks out of a year, Mitch could stilll get his feet wet manning a tower with a rookie-in-training.....

"You're right, Hobie. I did forget your courses ended today. I guess I have to eat more of these things.." Mitch stuffed a huge forkful of fish sticks into his mouth.

Hobie chuckled, "Yeah.. mom used to be really good at keeping you on track with stuff like..." he broke off with a pained expression, looking up t his father with wide eyes, "Since...you know."

Mitch put down his magazine and put it away, "It's o.k., Hobie.  
Talking about mom even though we're separated isn't forbidden or anything. Besides, open communication is the "in" thing now days and yeah, she was good at that. Have some milk."

Hobie was silent.

Mitch felt his discomforture and spoke just to fill the quiet, "Listen Hobie. I'm....thinking about inviting her over for a while to stay a few weeks in August before school starts. Gail's already said yes, and.."

Mitch noticed how hard his own fingers were gripping the table's edge. He forced himself to relax them, "You can't know how much she misses you.. Have you read any of the letters she's sent us?"

"No.." came the sharp reply.

Mitch tried not to show that his son's answer stung, "Wh-- Why not ? Hobie,,, Wh--"

"Because I didn't want to. " he replied. Hobie couldn't help glancing up at his father's face. He saw the hurt barely concealed in his eyes. A sudden stab of guilt coursed through him and he found himself saying, "She can come here. That is, if she can stop drinking so much." The boy's tears flooded forth, unbidden, "I- I- I miss her too, dad. But it gets so hard acting normal around her. When she's here with you, I can't help but feel like some kind of football being bounced around between you guys whenever you fight over me."

"Hey...hey..hey.." Mitch wiped a tear away from Hobie's cheek, "It doesn't have to be that way any more now that I've...got custody. Maybe this visiting thing will be a chance for us to try to become friends again. At least, it can be a start..."

Hobie thought of all the bad times the three had experienced going through the divorce. And now, he was just about sick of facing it any more. But...he thought, people do change for the better. It was something both of his parents had taught him.

Hobie looked at his shoes, "O.k...let's.....give it a shot.."

His dad's smile washed away any remaining doubt in Hobie's mind, "Let's go for it!" the boy shouted.

"One for O, Hobster... Come here..." Mitch embraced his son.

Hobie tapped him on a shoulder.

"Hmmm?" Mitch mumbled from inside their hug.

"She can come on one condition..."

"And what's that?" Mitch asked.

"Hamburger rallies are our secret.."

"Deal."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Photo: Dawn at a lifeguard tower.

Photo: Empty L.A. public beach.

Photo: Baywatch headquarters and a banana tree.

Photo: Lifeguard Jill Riley from NBC's baywatch show.

Photo: Lifeguard Trevor Cole from NBC's baywatch show.

Photo: Eddie Kramer from NBC's run of Baywatch.

Photo: Shauni McLane from Baywatch first season.

Photo: Hobie Buchanon from Baywatch.

Photo: Mitch Buchanon, from Baywatch.

Photo: Baywatch beach cop Garner Ellerbe on a four wheeler.

*  
From: "lafddispatcher" lafddispatchery... Date: Wed Feb 9, 2005 2:19 pm Subject: Confluence...

"Sweetheart, can you open your eyes for me?" Johnny knelt beside her and began to take her vitals.

Immediately, Carly folded up into a grand mal seizure at just a touch of his hands. "Roy, gimme the resuscitator. She's gonna need it.." he said sharply, turning the convulsing twelve year old onto her side to drain her mouth of food. Then he looked up once Carly was ventilating well enough under the positive pressure. "When did she eat last? I'm getting more than just a bit under this suction."

Julie Hanson flushed red with stress and trepidation.  
"We just finished having lunch with the other children. Is she gonna be all right?"

"Ma'am, we're doing everything possible. Now, what can you tell me about her medical history? Tell me everything you can." Roy said, listening to her breath sounds over the skin of her chest. Inside, he was happy the teachers had had the foresight to remove her clothing down to her underwear for safety. "Johnny, her lungs are clear. She breathing?"

"Not very well. I've taken that over." Gage replied,  
struggling to keep adequate oxygen pushing into the girl's shaking body without injuring her.

Julie Hanson spoke quickly, moving her very upset assistant, Lisa, to a chair to steady her. "Her name's Carly Davison, and she's twelve. She's autistic because of early seizures from a time when she had stopped breathing. She's had none now for almost a year, until today. This one is..is real bad.." she whispered, her fright making her voice tremble.

Roy looked up from where he was laying out an endotracheal tube in advance, even as he set up the biophone to call Rampart Base. "Has Carly had any other history of previous metabolic disturbances? Has she eaten anything strange or new? Or played with a new kind of school supply, like paint or with latex based clay?  
Has she taken sick, developed a fever recently?" Roy probed.

"No, nothing like that. Her mother Cory's been scrupulous about keeping her daughter well cared for despite of being a paraplegic and jobless, herself.." said the school nurse.  
"Can you stop the convulsions? Carly's doctor told me that they shouldn't be allowed to last any time at all. We were given these to use in case Carly ever had a seizure while at school. But I haven't had time to administer them yet." And she handed Roy a plastic baggie full of torpedo shaped white capsules. "And here's the authorization form signed by Mrs. Davison and Carly's doctor."

Gage took the bag and read the inscription on back of the silver foiled packet and only glanced at the consent form.  
"Valium, suppositories. Point four milligrams." Then he looked to Officer Howard. "Vince, take over for me. We're gonna be busy trying to get an I.V. started. She'll manage easy enough for you in spite of these muscular contractions. Whenever her head flips backwards between your knees, give her a shot from the valve."

"Got it." said the large sized African American policeman. He took off his helmet, tossing it onto the lunch table and got to work.

Lisa, nearby, started trying to hide the fact that she was beginning to cry. "Oh, Julie, things were going so well. We were supposed to leave to go to the Santa Monica Beach tomorrow for the kids' yearly Junior Lifeguards camping trip."

Johnny's head snapped up in surprise at their destination, but he couldn't afford to comment. He got right down to getting a second blood pressure off Carly as best he could while Roy got on the line.

"Rampart, this is Squad 51. Come in."

##Go ahead, 51. ## said Dr. Joe Early, almost immediately.

"Rampart, we have a twelve year old female, with a history of a prior severe seizure disorder which has led to early childhood hypoxic autism. She's currently in a grand mal under active ventilations on one hundred percent O2. Uh, Rampart, her air passages are free of spasming and clear of any gastric debris."  
reported Roy. "And her last bad seizure was over a year ago.  
BP's at least 90. I'm getting a radial. Pulse's real tachy."

##10-4, 51. Do you have parental consent?##

"That's affirmative, Rampart. A written note from a school RN via a doctor to treat for this condition."

##Understood. Does she phase clonic long enough to initiate an I.V, 51?##

Roy looked up at Johnny, who shook his head in an answer.

"That's negative, Rampart. The convulsions are now growing too violent for needlework. However we do have the child's prescribed rectal Valium. Its dosages are in .4 mg/kg increments."

##Ok. Use a first and second, 51. But don't exceed more than 1 mg per minute trying for her sedation. After those two doses,  
wait it out, until you can establish a Lactated Ringer's I.V. TKO.  
See if her breathing returns. If it doesn't, sedate to paralysis by any route Valium to get her ET intubated and supported on ambu. Keep in mind that she may just as quickly regain consciousness after the postictal state into a full recovery.  
Be prepared to handle that particular outcome if you do utilize that airway. Treat her for shock. I want vitals every five minutes and transport as soon as possible.##

"10-4, Rampart. Rectal Benzodiazepine times two.  
On apnea after cessation, ET intubate following full sedation; otherwise, manual ambu only. I.V. Ringer's to maintain." Roy looked up at the sound of an ambulance approaching. "Rampart, looks like our ride's here. Our ETA will be ten minutes."

##Bring her in without sirens, 51. Draw a purple top for a glucosal analysis, anticubital A.S.A.P., and an ice slurried red for an arterial blood gas. Bring both of them, Carly's forms and any other medications belonging to her along with you. Send an EKG en route.##

"Affirmative..Draw a purple and iced red, transport consent and prescriptions. Lead two is coming in ...two minutes.." said Roy. He set down the phone to help Johnny glove up and position Carly best to sedate her.

Soon, the medication started working and Carly relaxed out of her active seizuring and she immediately began to sigh occasionally around Vince's gentle mask placed breaths.  
Her chest started to move with a regular rhythm that everyone could see.

"She's finally breathing." Gage said, placing a hand on the child's stomach. " We'll get by with an oral just fine.." and he reached over to the oxygen case for a short oral. He placed it deftly over Carly's tongue and traded out Vince's ventilator valve for a simple plastic non-rebreather mask. "Thanks Vince. You're as handy as always."

"Anytime.." and the cop stepped back to begin filling out his report and taking an account from Julie Hanson.  
"Ladies, if I could just get a few words from you before she goes to the hospital..."

Soon, the tiny white blond girl was bundled warmly, dried of all moisture, and strapped onto a long board inside of a cervical collar to keep her safely secured for the trip across town to the ER.

On the way out the door, following the ambulance attendants,  
Johnny leaned into Lisa curiously. "Did I hear you correctly that all your students are headed out to Malibu beach tomorrow to attend some kind of lifeguard program for kids..?"

"Yes, that's right.." said Lisa. "Little Carly was so looking forward to bringing her mother to the beach."

"Carly's got a good chance of going along. She's had no serious complications today that a good night's sleep won't cure. Everything we did was just supportive, uh..." and Johnny held out his free hand out around all his packaged up medical gear.

"Oh,, Lisa.. Lisa Gibbons." and she returned his handshake.

"Nice to meet you Ms. Gibbons." he smiled graciously,  
"Perhaps my partner and I will see you out there.  
You see, our whole station's been assigned to help out that program with teaching CPR to all the kids coming in for a week...Well, that's along with attending a firefighter convention at the convention center in town in the evenings."

"Julie and myself won't be going..." blinked Lisa, wise his flirting already. "There are lifeguard teachers at Baywatch who will be substituting for us and serving as parental guardians while our school kids are there."

"Oh, I see.. Well, I'll be sure Roy, uh, that's my partner and me, my name's Johnny Gage, will keep a really close eye on Carly while she's attending all the activities."

"Thank you." said Lisa politely. "We and Mrs. Davison would really appreciate the extra paramedic eye watching over her."

"It'll be no problem at all." smiled Gage toothily, still locked and lost in Lisa's brown liquidy gaze. He didn't care if they were still red from stress.

Roy whistled, loudly. Johnny looked up. "Let's go, Dudley Do Right. The horse can't wait for ya." DeSoto said, already most of the way across the school's expanse of sunny lawn, following the attendants swiftly. They were towing Carly's gurney to the street.

Johnny startled, and dropped his helmet, which Lisa stooped down and promptly returned to him. Then Gage dropped his green pen from the notebook he stuck between his teeth in order to retrieve his navy jacket from on top of the drug box. "I'll be right behind ya in the squad, Roy. I know the way, remember?!"

But the ambulance had already loaded up and was moving away silently with only its lights flashing.

When Johnny Gage turned around to thank Lisa for his helmet and pen, she had gone to go comfort a now visibly sobbing Julie, sitting frozen in a desk chair. Scooping up a business card from the occupational school's entryway, Johnny said, "Don't worry. I'll call both of ya with progress reports on how much fun Carly's having. We both promise to... Ok?"

Both tired, numb women finally offered a pair of slight grins.

Johnny left the school at a fast run, hurrying to stow his equipment fast enough to catch up to Roy's rig without speeding drastically.

Vince gave him a wave as he returned to his own squad car. On the passenger's seat of the car, was the same convention flyer that Station 51's men had received along with their orders from Headquarters to go do community service and get in a bit of career shadowing with a sister service at the lifeguard network hub. Howard's assignment on the beach, was going to be a little different. He was assigned to learn how Malibu actually polices a ten mile long stretch of soft powdery sand and pounding tidal surf zones that regularly saw the feet of over half a million people each day of the Caifornian summer.  
::Maybe there'll be even more folks showing up because of all this heat we've been having lately. A little swimming time to cool off while I'm there's definitely in the cards. But it'll sure be weird trading my uniform pants out for a pair of bermuda shorts:: Vince thought ruefully.

Vince Howard's night shift was just over, so he made his way home eventually after grocery shopping to pack a very full suitcase for the upcoming convention event called Trading Stations.

----------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From : Roxy Dee Sent : Thursday, February 10, 2005 6:47 AM Subject : Beach Shennanigans~~ On the beach, things were heating up.

It was the longest embrace Craig had ever seen. Craig Pomeroy smirked. "Three minutes! That's got to be a record or something. Hey, Eddie.. Maybe this year, we can hold a kissing contest at the big picn--" He broke off.

They were ignoring him.

He tried again. "Guys, don't you come up for air at all? Shauni?? Hey--" ::Yep. Deaf as doornails. :: Craig looked skyward. Then he got a devil of an idea. He thought of a particularly nasty lifeguard captain who was notorious for firing rookies on the spot for the slightest infraction. He gasped. "Uh oh. Thorpe alert. Thorpe alert."

The results were spectacular. The two entwinees sputtered and flew apart rearranging various items of intense concern such as loose hair strands and clothing. "Where?! Wh--??" Eddie blurted.

A towel cracked inches away from his face. Its master, Craig, beamed. "Sorry guys. I just played a mean dirty trick on you BOTH. Aren't you lucky that ol' Thorpe is on vacation for a whole month!!"

Eddie's face looked rather pale from his initial shock but then he began to grin dangerously. The couple collapsed in limp relief into each other's arms. "Would you mind not doing that?! You know, this joking thing might turn into something you may not like buddy, ol' possibly-ex-partner-of-mine."

Craig was candid. "Yeah? Right. No horseplay on deck now. Listen, I'm serious." (He wasn't) Guys... it's pretty hard watching the water alone, no offense Shauni, but when you're around, Eddie's useless to me."

"I am not!" Eddie protested.

Craig grinned evilly. "Prove it." He tossed over a pair of binoculars to Eddie, who barely saved his face from eating eight inches of black metal and glass.

Then he glanced up at the ocean. He immediately frowned. He tossed a second pair to Shauni as well. "But I'm not on duty..." she stated.

"You are now. There's the start of a rip out there. Let HQ know about it."

"Right." Shauni said and jogged up the sky blue ramp into the tower and picked up a phone receiver just inside the frame doorway.

Sid, the switchboard operator answered. "Baywatch, HQ."

Shauni was brief. "Rip at 34. We need backup surveillance. Swimmers are clear."

In the nerve center of the watch station, Sid affirmed his latest call. "Righto, Shauni. I'm on it." He hung up, writing the info down on a piece of paper. He swiveled in his chair at the sound of approaching footsteps behind him. He greeted Mitch. "Boss, we've got a potential hot spot."

"Where?"

"Tower 34."

"Who's manning it today?"

"Craig and Eddie."

Mitch thought hard, "Ok, no biggie, ah... keep me posted. I wanna know the minute something does down, " Mitch started away, then he turned back, "OOo, no pun intended."

Sid smothered a laugh, "Of course."

Mitch left neatly.

Sid turned back to his switch board, quietly giggling to himself. "I hear ya." -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Craig hefted a red neon rescue can onto a shoulder, "I'm going on patrol. Eddie, check with the other towers, see if they've got heavy water developing, too. Shauni, get the flag up."

The two nodded and watched Craig jog down the ramp and begin a scouting run along the water's edge, keeping his eye on the muddier water of the abnormal current he had spotted and its relation to where the sea bathers were. So far, things were normal.

According to his wife, Craig was the only transplanted Manhattan lawyer whose closet was half filled with power suits and half with ragged beach wear. He had to admit, even the maid scoffed at umpteen paris of sandy toe thongs lying alongside three hundred dollar eelskin shoes.

Craig combed some fingers through his salt powered, light brown hair as he ran. So far, he was lucky. As well as he could tell, the bay was still behaving herself and was cooperating with her usual fair day swells. There were no surprises, .......yet.

He returned to his thoughts.

Craig couldn't give up lifeuarding for the life of him. He took the gentle jabs dished out by fellow colleagues at his law firm in food humor, He chuckled at some of them" The surfer who never grew up, Hey sea bum! Ya do any heavy breathing to a gorgeous babe today?

Pomeroy made no excuses. He loved the work. It was in his blood.

He had come a long way.

Mitch Buchannon and he had been old college roommates back in the early seventies. Back then, the two were avid surferheads desiring nothing but a rad wave and an occasional one night stand. Together, they had the dubious honor of throwing the best beach parties around. Craig laughed to himself as he remembered all of the swimming races he and Mitch used to hold to see which one of them was the stronger. It seemed only natural for both of them to wind up as lifeguards with the county. The job suited their spontaneous egos.

They were one of the best lifeguard teams for many years.

Beach bathers, especially junior high aged ones, came to know them as the "Dynamic Neon Dudes". It must have looked funny seeing a tall, brawny Mitch next to a tall, but lithe Craig, running down the beach in tandem with matching black shades and red neon trunks. many female eyes were turned and it wasn't long before one particular black-haired girl carried Craig's heart away to the altar. It was Gina who took him to New yark to finish his PhD in law.

But the lure of the ocean remained and he soon returned.... to his beach. His sand. It felt good under his feet.

Craig's eye followed the curl of the rip current flowing against the incoming surf. All of the swimmers were safely away from it, a good six hundred yards distant from the dark trough of out going muddy surge. He'd make sure that no one ventured into it...

He signalled the tower by waving his hand and gesturing with his life buoy by drawing a line straight above his head and down again three times.

Shauni saw him through her binoculars and signalled back, raising the red and yellow flag to half mast on its pole. One by one, the bathers heeded the cautionary and moved away from the rip. They moved north of the flag to where safety remained.

Craig relaxed a little and let them stay in the water.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Cory Davison drove her motorized wheelchair along the ocean view ocean gave her the tranquility that was so absent now from her life. Cory found herself watching the snorkling instructors and their students learning the art of diving way out among the waves. She brushed an errant red strand of hair away from her eyes as tears threatened suddenly.

No, Cory Davison, ex-dolphin instructor for the Point Loma Naval Cetacean Institute, would never know the joys of swimming again. Thanks to a stupid accident, her legs were dead. Oh, it really wasn't the fault of the institute that an orca was turned loose by an animal rights activist into the tank she and her dolphins were training within. No, security had been as tight as it had always been that day.

Cory shivered against the memory.

She had reacted reflexively, without thinking, and she had put herself between the confused semi wild whale and her dolphin charges. The powerful wake left by the whale's flukes as it veered off sucked Cory into an open running filter grate and her back was broken in two pieces. Full restitution had followed naturally and the settlement had been a big one....

So now, Cory had her life back.

She was without the freedom to pursue her life's ambition. Eight years of cetacean research had gone to waste. 'What a shame..' her colleagues had said in the hospital when they thought she was too sedated to hear them. "What a shame..." Cory the current quadraplegic echoed out loud. Quickly, she blinked away the sea and turned up the radio she had on a special mount by her head. It was the news of the hour and the weather report was next, "...This just in. The Naval Institute is missing a dolphin this afternoon from their highly classified testing facility. Charles Isaac, co-leader of the Greenpeace movement, was caught releasing the animal to the open sea while chanting animal rights slogans. The County Court House is expected to hear the case on Thursday. The amount set for bail is not yet known.... Moving on to the weather..."

Cory caught her breath, "Koko? Gone?"

She began racing her chair down the boulevard to the stony point of land reaching far out into the water. Once there, Cory began searching the breakers eagerly for any sign of dolphin. But only a wild pod of them were schooling fish beyond the reef in their usual fashion.

Cory's heart sank. But something inside of her would not die.

She took out a slender chrome whistle of high tech design on a matching chain from around her neck thoughtfully.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- It was one o'clock in the afternoon. At 327 South Seventh Street, sunlight poured through a tiny flat's bay window that over looked the ocean. Its beams washed over therapy equipment against one wall and then onto a light walnut table.

There, a sun-warmed walnut frame glinted in the sun revealing a portrait of a slender girl in a wheelchair and a medal of valor from the Navy draped on a ribbon across its edge. Next to it was a picture of a smiling twelve year old little girl, Carly.

This was Cory Davison's home. A place where her sharp realities could be escaped, if only for a little while, through the creation of pastel drawings. Hundreds of chalk dolphins etched on paper swam in a river of pages over the tan bedspread.

The papers were weighed down by a small crate of wood which lay on a pillow. An address label on its nearby lid read, "Attn. El Cajon Museum of Cultural History, 327 North Seventh Street, La Jolla, CA."

A rich treasure trove of artifacts lay within the box, glowing under the light, only partially packed in shipping sawdust.

No one was home.

Suddenly, a shadow marred the harmony of sunbeams inside the small cabana. A figure was standing at the window.

Black gloved hands tested the window latch and found it unlocked. White lamay curtains billowed in the wind, concealing the figure as it stepped inside the room. Paper dolphins flew everywhere and into the intruder's face as the crate was lifted into black clothed arms.

The robber grunted and nearly dropped the precious find in surprise. The eyes did not see a heavy object fall onto the bed from the crate before a drawing tumbled in the seawind from the open window and covered where the artifact fell. There was no time to waste. The crook had what was sought by so many.

The dark figure left the way it came.

A last breeze from the closing window cleared the bed of sketches, revealing an object of beauty which sent the sunlight sparkling into all corners of the room.

It was a foot high sculpture of a dolphin leaping within a curling wave and the light it cast so brilliantly from the sunlight, graced the bed richly. The ancient statue was made of the purest gold.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: Craig Pomeroy, lifeguard, smirking.

Photo: Lifeguard rookie Shauni McLane, standing over a watchtower railing.

Photo: Lifeguard rookie Eddie Kramer, sitting, embarrassed.

Photo: Riptide warning flags on a beach, with a surfer in background.

Photo: A woman in a wheelchair, cruising the shoreline.

Photo: A gold dolphin statue of great age.

*  
From : Cassidy Meyers Sent : Thursday, February 10, 2005 12:13 PM Subject : [EmergencyTheaterLive] Foggy foggy dew and lifeguards, too.

Johnny Gage hefted up his knapsack and blinked into the misty morning. He was toes deep in ocean sand and feeling more disoriented with every passing second. A loud rawkious noise assaulted him and he ducked as a pair of bold seagulls dive bombed his head, looking for handouts.

"Ahh! Go away...!" he snapped at them, flailing his arms over his head in irritation.

"Can't go away, we're supposed to show up here at Baywatch Headquarters to greet all the kids as they come in."  
Roy's figure appeared out of the murk and he calmly drew out a portable airhorn from his pocket and kicked it off, frightening away the birds.

A treble screech of surprise made Johnny look down to about waist level towards the noise. "Chris DeSoto? What are you doing here?"

The boy just smirked and watched his father peer about into the fog making sure the birds were gone for good. "Heh.  
Dad figured the camp children would be intimidated by seeing men firemen teaching em something and too awe struck hero worshipping the life guards to concentrate enough to learn anything, so that's where I come in. I'm gonna show those guys all the CPR steps and help teach it along with dad."

Gage rubbed a sleeper out of his eye. "Huh, might work. Roy,  
you'd better hit that airhorn again to get someone's attention up there through all this fog. Cause my knocking hasn't been doing anything yet so far. Besides, my heart's pounding so fast from that air attack that I can't move my arms yet."

"You're kidding.." laughed Chris. "I love seagulls. They never take any crud from anybody. And they sound neat, too. Their calls can put me to sleep at night."

"I can't see seagulls as calming unless it's at a distance." Johnny admitted, ruffling Chris's hair.

"I love the brassy noises gulls make. Nothing but positive memories. Not many sounds give ya that kind of effect." Roy countered.  
"Ready?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe this'll wake you up more, too, while it's being our doorbell.  
You've never been much of a morning person." Roy let loose another wail from the horn, making sure it wasn't in a set of three blasts that would cause an emergency to be declared by the watch guard.

Finally, the lifeguard station garage door opened.  
"Roy DeSoto and Johnny Gage?" a beaming Jill Riley greeted quizzically.

"And son." said Chris DeSoto, taking the lifeguard's hand warmly.  
"Yep. We're your first aid teachers for today."

"Great. Captain Stanley told me to expect you. The rest of your station crew's already inside with us having breakfast. Come on in.  
Don't worry about being late. The fog's delayed the student busses arriving from the Hotel until mid morning. We've plenty of time to work out a teaching itinerary."

Gage shook the woman's hand. "Glad to meet you, Jill. Tell me,  
is there a Carly Davison on your list of kids for our CPR class today?"

Riley checked her lifeguard slate. "I believe she is. Do you know her?"

Roy smiled. "In a matter of speaking. We took care of her yesterday in school on a run and we've promised her teachers that we would keep an eye on her."

"That'll be all of us watching then. We got the heads up on her seizure disorder and we'll have a beach truck nearby in case anything happens to her again." the tall blonde ponytailed lifeguard sighed.

"Let's go. I didn't know where to put the CPR manikin so I left it in our rover." Johnny said.

"That's ok. I'll send down one of the rookie guards to collect it after we eat."

Shivering in the early morning chill, Johnny began to anticipate putting on a lifeguard jacket over his fire uniform. "Man, is it always this foggy at six am? This stuff's thicker than pea soup."

Jill Riley laughed, showing them the way upstairs to the main Headquarters area in front of all the spot windows. "Only on days that are gonna turn out to be real scorchers. It's called a land/sea breeze. It'll burn off by eight thirty or so. Don't worry.  
We'll still be able to hold class on the beach as we planned."

"Good deal. Come on, Chris. I'll bet they have your Wheaties already on the table." Roy said, shoving his son forward ahead of them on the gray blue painted wooden stairs.

In the main rec room, all the lifeguards not on towers were there along with the rest of Station 51's gang. Chet greeted Roy, Johnny and Chris by saying....

-  
Photo: A fog bound coastline.

Photo: Johnny and Roy in the squad, lost in fog.

Photo: Attacking seabirds.

Photo: Chris DeSoto in a blue T shirt.

Photo: Jill Riley, lifeguard, inside Baywatch headquarters.

************************************************************************* From: "chameleonkate01" chameleonkateh... Date: Sat Feb 12, 2005 3:36 pm Subject: Breakfast Banter "Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to put in an appearance. I think I'm gonna haveta talk to the dispatcher here and see about hardwiring your hotel room's phone into L.A. so you guy'll start receiving our usual station wake up morning check. Say,  
Chris, did you throw those pillows I told you to try to get these two sleeping beauties out of bed?" Kelly grinned.

Gage and DeSoto, stuck in the presence of strangers, had to be politely civil and curb their first instinctive sarcastic replies.

Chris DeSoto smiled toothily. "Yeah, sure did. Took three pillows to get "Uncle" Gage up. Thanks for the suggestion."

"Anytime. Keep those good ideas coming, Chet. I know how the vacation syndrome works, first ya can't slow yourself down, and then you can't get moving again, for days..." said the dark haired boy.

Johnny cleared his throat loudly in embarrassment to atone for he and his partner being late. "Must've been all that good sea air druggin' us into a stupor. Our lungs didn't know what to make of the absence of all the usual city smog.." he grinned.

Baywatch Captain Thorpe, sitting to Hank Stanley's right, wiped his mouth free of scrambled egg and pushed his empty plate aside.  
"It's quite all right, young man. I saw the kind of business your firehouse pulled in the last twenty four hours. The two of you went on more rescues in a day, than my whole lifeguard tower crew force did in three days. You were bound to crash hard and that, is something that's entirely excusable."

"Thanks, Mr. Thorpe. At least somebody understands the workload Roy and I have been handling." Gage said, smiling and throwing eye daggers at Kelly.

Hank nodded. "17 runs in 20 hours. That's definitely a station record..."

"For what, Cap? What about our fire engine's record day?" asked Chet. "In 1970, we did a 25-er that year; when we got all those brush fires in the hills. While Roy and Johnny were messing around with that baby goat call, we put in at least a dozen hot spot appearances."

Stanley afforded Chet a no nonsense, don't cross me glance, highly tempered."....for any shift's paramedic squad, Kelly. You didn't let me finish my sentence. Please clam up and eat. Our guest hosts are going to be splitting us into our teaching and tower shadowing assignments before the sun clears the horizon. Eleven's when all the kids come in for guard camp."

Chet bobbed his head in cooperation, giving up on needling his two favorite targets.

Jill Riley changed the subject, but she was grinning. She fully understood what ribbing meant. "We've some clock radios handy gentlemen, if you think the Tropical Paradise Syndrome'll KO young Mr. DeSoto here,  
too."

"Those'll work.." said Gage quickly, glomming on to a solution to a serious problem. "Thanks, Miss Riley."

Roy shoved a milk carton near and opened it for his son, before he winced and caught himself in the act for being too parent-y.  
"Chris's all green lights. He pulls CPR sets even cleaner than we do."

"Ain't that the truth. Mike Stoker here's the one who drilled him."  
Johnny said through his food full mouth.

Mike Stoker cracked a few knuckles in unabashed pride, staying silent.

Lt. Mitch Buchannon walked into the room holding a sheaf of papers from his office desk. "It's all set people. Oh, hiya guys. Looks like our two guest paramedics finally got here. Hobie. Go eat." he said.

Chris's eyes got real big at the sight of another boy his age, wearing a junior lifeguard's outfit. "Wow, is that you, Hobie Buchannon? I saw you in the newspaper a couple of months ago for saving that little girl who fell off the pier..." he said with big eyes. "I don't know how you did that.  
I would've completely chickened out jumping off from so high a place."

"The secret's keeping your feet together and folding your arms around yourself when you hit." said Hobie, instantly bonding with Chris DeSoto.  
"Here, let me tell you some other pointers.." and the two boys fell into animated conversation much to the amusement of all the adults.

Chet split a gut and kept on chewing.

"It'll sure be nice having some medics around this week without having to wait for an ambulance on all our surf victim calls." said a rookie girl.

Captain Thorpe held up his hand. "Now, now now. Station 51 is here to learn from us and us from them in a kind of....cultural exchange while they're here for their firefighter's convention. They aren't here to pull a full working shift."

"No, but we'll help out whenever possible. We have to by law anyway,  
We're still in Los Angeles County." Roy said matter of factly.

"Ok, but only for the serious ones right in and around HQ. I won't have you fellas overextending yourselves unnecessarily." Don said.

"Spoken like a true captain.." said Stanley. "A man after my own heart. Glad to make your acquaintance, Don.." Hank said, offering Thorpe his hand. "I think we'll keep all our people in sharp enough order easily enough without them playing too much in the sand."

"So we will, Hank. I've already sent for someone who'll be able to spy on them to keep tabs on how they're getting along with the kids. He's teaming up with your own service area's Officer Vince Howard. A Sergeant Garner Ellerbe. A good man and a very solid dependable sort of beach cop. They'll be cruising around on all terrain bikes every day while all the children are here." Don teased. "My lifeguards'll have their hands full enough just watching the public ones."

"Where is Vince now?" asked Hank.

"Getting fitted into his beach uniform downstairs. I heard his voice asking Garner about what colored socks'll go best with Bermuda navy shorts." Don said. "I've already given him a radio set to the same frequency as the towers and to our camp staff's active channel.  
Also, after you and your men, and...little Chris DeSoto, here, get fitted into your lifeguard jackets,..Sid Malone, our dispatcher on the switchboard'll hand out one to each of you."

"Looking forward to it.." Cap smiled, speaking for his hungrily eating men.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos : None.

*  
From : patti keiper Sent : Saturday, February 12, 2005 4:58 PM Subject : [EmergencyTheaterLive] The Mirage.. It was noon, exactly.

Trevor Cole, the private club's Australian lifeguard, was having an excellent day. He was looking for the day's perfect ten.

He scanned his water and saw her.... a gorgeous blonde almost lost in the foamy breakers. He smiled and waved at her. She waved back, all teeth and golden tresses.

Trevor cat called.

Jill, still stuck in the tower next to him, rolled her eyes with a look of long suffering. Totally avoiding a glance at Jill, Trevor checked the angle of the sun and noticed it was lunch time. He signalled his replacement, a zitfaced eighteen year old named, Matt Brody. "Yo, Matt! Front and center." he drawled in his Aussie accent.

The knobbed kneed kid grabbed his sunglasses and started jogging in macho style over to his partner and promptly tripped over his huge feet. He scrambled upright and managed to make it to Trevor without losing too much face, "Shift change?" he drooled eagerly.

Trevor shook his head ruefully. Whoever hired this dolt for lifeguarding surely had little in the brains department. Trevor figured he'd better tread lightly, though, for the kid might turn out to be the club owner's son for all he knew. At any rate, he couldn't resist a barb or two, "Stop sticking your chest out, kid, or you'll wind up cracking a few ribs."

"Oh,... ah, " Matt articulated, "I remembered my binoculars today, Trev."

Trevor smiled blandly, "Good. Every good lifeguard ought to have 'em, don't you think?"

"Heh, heh, heh." I know, buddy boy. That's why I brought them."

The Australian decided not to press the issue, "Fine."  
The blonde barbie was still giving him the eye so Trevor decided to pay his bathing beauty a personal call. He tossed his head seaward, "Hey Matt. Ain't she a looker?"

The freckled teen looked and saw no one in the water except Mrs. Fishmeyer. "Her?" he laughed, "You must have a thing for grandmotherly types."

Trevor glanced out again and saw his perfect ten still smiling at him from the seafoam."Matt. Quit kidding with me, all right? Tell me you see a young, blonde woman out there by the reef buoy."

Matt searched again. "No, man." he frowned. "You must have been in the sun too long or something. How about going in for a swim to cool yourself off?"

Trevor, still seeing his dream girl, nodded confusedly, "Yeah, right. I I-I think I'll do just that."

He jumped down out of his chair, letting Brody take his place and he waded out into the water in front of them. He swan dived into the waves marveling at how well the woman was holding her own in the large, white breakers out there. She was both head and shoulders out of the water, beckoning to him with both arms. Trevor shook his head. "Oh, well." he thought. "She's a mystery, but I'll soon find out."

He swam powerfully out to sea. "Hey,..what are you doing way out here?!" he shouted. She didn't reply but wavered tantilizingly close, flashing him a winning smile. Trevor tried again with an even bigger smile. "What's your name, doll?"

Trevor was very near her when she laughed and ducked beneath a wave. "Hey!" he cried. He waited expectantly for dainty hands to pull at his trunks. A minute past. But still, he felt no fingering caresses. Trevor grinned like a cheshire cat, "So, it's hide and seek, eh? Two can play that game."

He dove under for a peek and saw a figure swimming masterfully over the coral shoals far beneath him. He caught a glimpse of shimmering green, and a......tail?!

Trevor shot upwards. Now he really WAS confused. It was far too shallow for tuna to be around. And just where did the girl disappear to? Then he heard silvery laughter behind him. Whirling, he saw a mass of hair and an incredible smile beneath the water.

Her beautiful face was framed by the noon day glare from the surface and his eyes watered heavily as he tried to look past it. He squinted, and suddenly, she was gone. "What th--?"

Then a huge whirlpool sucked him away.

He had forgotten about the rip current! Its strength was terrible and Trevor was helpless within it.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -  
At tower 34, Shauni McLane had just finished changing into her red lifeguard suit. She was starting for the door when the phone on the inside door frame started ringing. "I'll get it Eddie!" Shauni shouted, and answered it, "Tower 34, McLane here."

A voice babbled into her ear.

"A WHAT was sighted by Crystal Pier?!" she exclaimed. The voice reiterated details."Ok, I'll let him know. Oh, one more thing. I got shanghai'ed into duty because of the alert, would you put me active? Thanks." She hung up the line.

Outside, Eddie Kramer was in a director's chair keeping tabs on the bathers and noting where his partner was patrolling the shoreline. He saw that Craig Pomeroy was still jogging slowly south in a very routine sweep. So far, everybody was playing it safe by not going into the rough water. Still, Eddie could remember past alerts where one or two people, who thought they were being macho, ended up getting stuck within a rip. Maybe this time, things would be different. Heartened, Eddie relaxed his vigil a notch.

Shauni came out to lean on the rail near him, "Hey Eddie. You're not going to believe this! HQ just called with a very weird story."

"Oh yeah? Try me. There's not much going on out here." he said. He took a swig from his water bottle and set it down next to a chair leg.

Shauni took that as an invitation and sat down in the chair beside him.  
"Apparently, HQ saw a Coast Guard clipper out in front of Crystal Pier chasing something in the water. At first, they thought the boat was going after some hot shot jet skier. A closer look revealed that they were actually trying to capture a dolphin with a noose! Imagine that!! Chasing an animal with a rope and five hundred horses of screaming boat engine. How cruel can anyone get?"

"Imagine that..." Eddie said as he fell into a paroxysm of chuckles.  
Shauni cocked a confused eyebrow, "Eddie, I didn't get the joke here."  
Eddie elaborated. "Oh, ha, ha (Choke).. It's Flipper.. Making a run for it. Maybe he got tired of all of those slimy sardines his trainers were feeding him."

For Shauni's small size, she slugged him a good one. "Eddie, the poor thing must've been terrified having those men roaring down after it like that... I hope it got away."

Her fiance' was slowly recovering, "What would the Coast Guard want with a dolphin?"

Shauni speculated, "Maybe it was coming too close to the leisure craft lanes and they were afraid of it colliding with a speedboat."

"That's pretty far fetched wouldn't you say?" he commented.

Shauni's face soured, "Oh, and I suppose you can think up a better reason..."

"No, I probably can't. Wait a minute. I know why headquarters was watching them so closely so far out of jurisdiction.."

"All right. I'll bite. Why?"

Eddie began to laugh helplessly again. His smile was infectious.

Shauni grinned. "Spill it funny boy.."

"Well," Eddie howled, "A dolphin taking out a cruiser would certainly give us a little business to take care of, now wouldn't it?"

Shauni surprised him by saying nothing. "Finishing the story..." she continued distantly, retrieving something off of the floor, "..the watchman also said she gave them quite a run for their money.."

"Now "it" is a "she"? Why can't Flipper be a "he"?"

Shauni only looked at him.

Eddie humored her, "Ok, ok, What was Flipper doing during the big chase?"

"Oh,..." she said, seemingly only half interested, "She was seen weaving in and out of the pier pilings getting everybody thoroughly..." She flung something at him. "...SOAKED!!!!"

A flood of water from Eddie's own bottle cascaded down his front. Eddie jumped to his feet, "Aggghhhh ! I guess I deserved that."

"You sure did. It's a shame that was WARM water." Shauni burbled, "The bottle I wore this morning was slightly colder."

Blinded, Eddie coughed and groped for a towel, "And here I thought I was getting it for the crack about the dolphin..."

"I never forget a slight, dearest.." Shuani waved the towel just out of reach, "Looking for something?"

Eddie groaned and stopped groping around. He wiped his streaming face on an arm, "Ha. I can't stop laughing.." he said sarcastically, "Can I sit down now, Pool eyes? Thanks.." He sat.

Nearby, Shauni was laughing so hard, she couldn't breathe.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

He couldn't breathe. Trevor tried to reach the surface of the water, and failed. Darkness swept him away.....

On shore, Matt was laughing with a few of Trevor's flockers when he looked up, sighting for his partner. Trevor was nowhere to be seen. Matt stood up in the chair, scanning with his binoculars to the rip. He saw a flailing leg break the surface once and sink again. "Jill!!!"

The tall woman shifted away from her water irritably,  
"What now?" she snapped.

"It's Trevor! He's in the rip!!"

Jill glassed the area and saw Trevor's hand reaching feebly into the air. His head wasn't visible. ::Oh, sh*t. And I got one of the firestation's medics here to babysit through this.::

She shot an urgent glance at Roy DeSoto sitting in a chair next to her and said. "Trouble."

"What?" asked Roy.

"It's our local beach pest who thinks he's a lifeguard. Rip's got him.  
Go ahead and kick the phone, Roy. Take it off the hook. It'll alert Sid at HQ to our location." she said rising and peeling off her jacket.

"Got it. I'll get the gear set up from the responding beach truck once it arrives. Anything else?" Roy said calmly, reaching for his radio.

"Not yet.." stressed Jill, as she glassed the curling rip intently to get an accurate placement of Trevor's location as he was pulled out to sea.

Matt Brody, stumbly with panic, started for the water.

"No, Matt! You don't have a can. Call in the details on your radio!" She grabbed a rescue can from its hook on the roof corner of her tower and hit the breakers, porpoising powerfully out to the dark tongue of ripping water. The huge waves made it difficult for her to keep sight of Trevor's location, "Hold on!! I'm coming, Trevor!"

From the beach, Craig saw Jill go in from the corner of his eye. He unraveled his lifeline and slipped the elastic band over his shoulder. He spotted her target victim.

"Trevor." he said through clenched teeth, "If this is a joke, you owe me two plane tickets for Gina and me, for an entire Las Vegas weekend."

Throwing his tethered life buoy behind him, he rapidly swam out after her.

-  
Eddie and Shauni were now aware of what was happening in the Yacht Club's waters and called Sid for the rescue boat and a beach unit. They began watching all other areas for other trapped people. There were none. The two guards sighed in relief. They divided their attention between the oblivious crowds and Jill and Craig's run, being thoroughly stuck with staying put at their post.

"Come on, hurry..." Shauni urged. She couldn't even see where Trevor's body was hitting the top anymore. The siren from the beach truck grew from the north. She could see Mitch coming fast and Roy DeSoto, running down Jill's tower ramp, to meet him.

-  
Jill Riley treaded water at the last place she saw Trevor Cole go down. The currents were very strong and they were pulling her farther and farther out and away from the safety of the beach head.

She let them, knowing the launch would pick them all up beyond the coral reefs. Jill took a deep breath and dove deep, hoping to catch a glimpse of pink skin or striped shorts.

She saw nothing. Jill resurfaced.

Craig was stationing nearby looking further out along the rip streaming out past them. "Jill! Do you see him anywhere?"

She shook her head, "No, Where did he go? Chr*st, " she looked at her watch. "...it's been four minutes already."

Craig cursed, knowing that they were now well within the brain damage window time frame and he urgently looked out towards the kelp reef again. He saw the launch already scanning its outer edge beyond the rough water where the rip's energy was dying. "The boat's covering the rip outlet. Standard search pattern. Go!"

And he dove deep to the left.

Jill searched to the right. A long half minute passed and they both saw nothing but murky brown blue. They resurfaced, gathered sustaining lungfuls before trying again. And again. Unsuccessfully.

Jill said, "Corkscrew. Up rip. From the bottom. We've got to risk it before we get too tired to try!"

"Ok.." Craig said. He knew the added risk she referred to was one he willingly gave on many rescue attempts. "Let's do it. I'm with you.." He gave the corkscrew sign to the launch so that they would plan for the lifeguards' safety as well with scuba geared backup if something should go wrong. He got his thumbs up from Newman in affirmation.

Jill and Craig began their dangerous free dive to the base of the rip's belly. Arching their sweeps in ever widening circles, they past each other from opposite directions thirty feet below the surface and each spiraled upwards in a column back towards the sunlight glimmering far above, letting the rip's force sweep them along its submerged tongue. Long seconds later, the sinking cap of current flattening his hair finally eased. They were almost at the terminal outlet! Trevor most likely was already cast out of it ahead of them near the rocky seafloor.

Craig's lungs burned as the silence of the cold water around him turned the blood in his head into a shrill ringing in his ears from oxygen debt. He would have to come up for air soon. The pain in his chest was almost ruling him when a blessedly darker shape crossed his eyes.

Jill's arm struck Trevor's limp body about the same time Craig's did. They each grabbed a pale purple arm and bore the Australian hastily to the surface. The long trip up seemed to take an eternity and each moment that passed was a living hell for both the senior lifeguards as they ascended as fast as they could go. Was Cole dead? They saw no sign of motion in Trevor's limbs at all through the murk.

The loud seawind's whine and the blinding white noon day sun immediately greeted Pomeroy as he broke the top. He shook stinging salt out of his eyes and he hyperventilated desperately to end his own frantic air hunger demand. Then he willed strength to drag Trevor up next to himself. Jill, just moments later, pulled both their red rescue cans close for their buoyant, supporting help.

His trembling hands fouled on something cool and heavy around Trevor's neck as he rolled the man's unconscious face out of the water. "What th-?" Craig blurted out in surprise. A strange, intricate pearl and kelp necklace adorned his throat, not the fishing net or other sort of similar debris he had been expecting. ::This thing doesn't float at all.:: "Somebody had to have put this here." he coughed. "Might explain why he couldn't get out of the rip on his own or lift his head out."

Jill was nonplussed, "Forget it for now. Is he breathing?" she said, pulling the odd glimmering jewelry away from the front of Trevor's neck and chest. They were heavy. The gold filagree chain they were woven into, was too well made for either of them to break or even lift free from their victim. Gasping with effort, she helped Craig tip Trevor's head back over one of their rescue floats so that they would get the clear airway they needed.

Craig listened carefully by Trevor's mouth and was surprised that he didn't see any of the deep blue of suffocation on his lips. Seconds later, comforting breath's mist warmed his cheek and below, he felt good movement in Trevor's chest from the tight bearhug he had around him. "Yeah. He's... uh... he seems to be fine. He's just out, that's all. Weird.. He's not even aspirated. There's no water in his mouth." he said, looking up at Jill with utter surprise. "I don't get it. He was under for five minutes! He shouldn't be breathing,.. But he is.." He laughed in sheer amazement.

"Are you sure?"Jill asked. "It's pretty wavy out here. Maybe the bumpy water's tricking you." and she stared hard at Trevor's mouth and chest trying to see what Craig could feel. She didn't trust the pulse she felt under her fingers to be one that wasn't in danger of fading away.

"See for yourself. He's not even cyanotic." Craig shrugged and he waved unnecessarily for the launch's pickup approach. Jill did another kind of check and covered Trevor's mouth with hers while sealing off his nose with a pinch. Almost immediately she felt a resistance to a test puff of air she blew into his lungs. An exhalation from a breath already healthily drawn met her own going in, with a conflicting rush of pressure. Jill released Trevor's face and looked up, wide eyed in disbelief.

Trevor WAS breathing easily, in no distress at all.

Craig smiled and trilled the twilight zone theme spookily. "And the spectre of death shall have no power over any man who has no fear of the briny deep."

Jill set her mouth in a firm line, "Oh, ha ha.. " she said dryly, "Let's get Aquaman here ashore. If air exchange isn't his problem, this cold water sure will be soon enough."

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Mitch and Matt and Roy met the launch as it ground to a halt on the beach.  
Mitch hardly looked at Trevor as he grabbed him under the arms,  
"We've got the resuscitation equipment laid out by the truck. If we hurry, we can--"

"You won't need it. " Craig drawled.

Mitch hesitated., shifting his grip as they carried Trevor over to a backboard waiting on the sand. Craig sounded more...bored than anything else. "What?" Mitch blinked.

"He's breathing regularly like clockwork, Mitch. Only he's out like a light."

The four of them eased Trevor onto his back and centered him on the long board. Mitch put an 0/2 mask over his face and secured an airway. He felt for a carotid pulse in Trevor's clammy neck even as Roy DeSoto started setting up a portable suction unit near his easy reach.

It was there. Mitch looked up, his face full of question marks. "I've got a pulse?"

"We can't understand it, either." Jill commented.

Roy DeSoto, checking out Trevor's pupils for signs of hypoxia,  
sighed. "Maybe he was getting to the top longer than you expected."

Matt hovered close, "How is he? I'm the one who spotted him. I got Jill a-and.."

Mitch couldn't believe what his eyes were telling him. Here was a man who had been caught underwater for over four minutes. And he was still breathing... He shook his head, "I don't know.. I...he's...breathing just ...fine," he didn't meet Jill and Craig's triumphant conspiracy of smirks.  
"We'll have to wait until the rest of the paramedic gear gets here to be sure he's out of danger."

Roy DeSoto saw Trevor was deeply unconscious but in good shape otherwise.  
He wasn't dyspneic even slightly and there was a new unnatural bright shade of red rising into his face and chest. :: Acute sunburn?:: he wondered.  
::I wonder if he heat stroked out there.::

Mitch cleared his throat, meeting his lifeguards' eyes in all serious business.  
The anger rose up only then, "Just what the h*ll was he doing in the water!  
Matt said that there was no one in the area who was in trouble!"

Jill and Craig fought to keep straight faces.

Craig spoke up, combing some fingers through his hair, "Beats the h*ll out of me.. Maybe there WAS someone else going down out there. I don't know. I sent the launch back out on another sweep just to make sure."

Matt had noticed the strange necklace around Trevor's neck. He pulled it free and held it up and his mouth flopped open, "Will ya look at these!  
They must be worth a fortune!" He pointed to an ornately marbled pearl that was the central piece, "Wow! This is a black pearl. Look at the size of it!"

The pearl hardly fit into his hand.

"That bauble isn't our concern right now." Mitch told him, "Trevor is. Now put that thing in the truck for safe keeping and go get a thermal blanket,  
will ya?"

Matt blinked, "Oh, yeah, ..uh, right." He went.

Mitch's walkie talkie crackled. It was the launch boat, ##Tower 34, this is Rescue One.##

"Go ahead, Rescue." the lieutenant replied.

##Yeah, this is Kip here. Ahh, ...We've circled the perimeter of the rip,  
and...there's..no sign of another victim.## The voice sounded sad and uncomfortable.

Mitch reassured him, "Kip, tell the guys that there was a good chance that this one was an error, that the club guard may have been ill, ok?"

Kip was heartened, ##Will do. Returning to base.##

Mitch wrapped up the run, "HQ, our man's ashore. Water sweep's clear.  
Recall all responding lifeguard units to base. Tower 34 out."

Craig crossed his arms together, "So there goes that theory. If anyone had been in trouble, the patrol would've found them by now." He frowned,  
"Matt, what did Trevor see out there?"

The teen had finished laying a foil blanket over his partner's still form, "A perfect ten." he answered.

"Hmm?" Mitch queried.

Matt clarified, " 'A gorgeous blonde.' " he said. I didn't see anyone except Mrs. Fishmeyer. And all of us know that Mrs. Fishmeyer is far from being blonde, or a perfect ten."

The men laughed. Jill kicked Matt in the butt, "Cute, Matt, Th-that's real cute." she said sarcastically.

Matt went on, ignoring Jill, " I figure he got a little too much sun. He was acting a little funny."

"He ALWAYS acts a little funny." the rest said as one. Everyone exchanged surprised looks at their mutual outbursts echoed out of everyone else.

Mitch shrugged off the jinxed moment, "Well how do you explain that strange necklace?"

No one had an easy answer.

Roy nodded for Mitch to move his body out of the way while he listened closely to Trevor's ribcage for breath sounds with a stethoscope from the O2 bag. "He's still clear. So far so--"

Under Mitch's hands, Trevor began coughing and struggling wildly.  
The 0/2 mask went flying. It took all of them to hold him down.

"Hey, hey. Hey." Craig yelled, "Just take it easy. You're out and on the beach."

"NO!" Trevor screamed, "You don't understand! SHE'S out there.  
Y-You've got to get her out of there!! *gasp*"

"Stop fighting us a second, Cole." Jill shouted firmly.

Trevor quieted, rolling over onto his side to spit out some salt.  
"..oh.." he moaned.

"Easy.." said Roy, helping him get it out.

Everyone else, except Mitch, began talking all at once.

The whole situation was a little too weird, even for the one who was supposed to have seen it all before. Mitch rubbed his face with a hand in irritated frustration, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute! Just.  
Shhh!" he hissed.

Everybody moused down. Silence reigned except for the waves and seabird cries.

"Not you, Trevor! I want you to shed some light on this whole thing!"

Trevor croaked meekly, "Well...what do you want to know?"  
he said, turning back over onto the board.

Mitch let out all of his breath in one long, controlled sigh,  
"Trev,...WHO'S out there?"

"A girl. My girl, uh..." he changed track. "A dreamy blonde.  
She was out there by the reef buoy.." Trevor answered dutifully.

"Annnd?" Mitch encouraged with irritation.

"A-and she wanted me to go out....."

Mitch smiled, "That's better." Honey dripped from his voice.

"....there." Trevor finished, pointing out to sea.

"WHAT?!"

Jill piped up, "Whoa. Whoa. Mitch, ....let me try." Jill was dubious. "Trevor, when we got to you, you were alone. The launch just confirmed it."

Cole looked at all the faces riging around him one by one, "No way. No way!" his voice cracked. "Guys, I KNOW what I saw..."

Jill stood, "Yeah? Right! This is probably just another stunt of yours trying to get me to start paying attention to you. Well, I've got news for you. It's not going to work. "Going out into that rip was really stupid, Trevor. You know that?"

"Jill, keep it down." stage whispered Craig. "You're gathering a crowd."

"We ALWAYS gather a crowd, or haven't you noticed?" she tossed back, acidly sweet.

Mitch was determined to keep things civil, "Uh,.please don't..." he pleaded. Craig and Jill stopped. Inwardly, Mitch gawked. His two senior guards actually listened to him for once. Mitch could've gaped at them all day..but there was pressing business at hand. "Trevor,..from the top..."

Trevor dropped his head, with a hollow clunk, back onto the long board,  
"I tell you, I saw her. There was something.. a big green fish or--... You see, ..there was this tail....a-and..."

Craig speculated, "It was pretty choppy out there. It was hard to see much of anything, let alone fine detail. Perhaps one of your teenaged devotees was playing a practical joke on you..."

"Good for her.." Jill quipped. "She almost managed to end your useless l-"

"JILL!" Mitch roared.

The blonde woman stifled into tolerable rumbles.

By now, Trevor was nearly overcome with shaky exhaustion,  
"I tell you.. I-I never saw that girl before in my life!" Tears threatened to burst free, "She w-was so beautiful.."

"Try and relax now." Roy DeSoto comforted, feeling Trevor's wrist for an updated pulse quality check. "Help is on the way. You'll feel much better if you don't try and move around too much."

Trevor grabbed his arm, "So beautiful.. like a siren from Greek Mythology."

Jill had had enough. She wasn't buying another minute of such b*llcr*p. "Oh for Pete's sake! You're not really going to BELIEVE him? Next, he'll probably tell us he saw a frickin' MERMAID!...I'm going to go wait for the ambulance until it comes. Call me if you need me." She stormed off.

Mitch was muttled. He tried a different tact. "Listen, Trevor.. we all know how sometimes a skipped workout or forgetting to take in fluids can sometimes cause a cramp. So, why don't you just drop the charade and adm--"

The distraught man nearly levitated, "I haven't missed a single morning's workout and I never, EVER go on duty without drinking PLENTY of water before, during, and after my working shift. Just ask Matt here!"

Matt Brody smiled in unconvincing support.

::Uh oh.:: Craig thought. ::Mitch absolutely hates conversations like this:  
He decided to sit out the coming ringside rounds by putting away the 0/2 apparatus. Craig was securing the last strap in its housing when something glittered into the corner of his eye from the sand at the waterline.

Curious, he strode down to the hard pack and scooped up the object before the next wave scurried it away.

Mitch and Trevor were still at it when he sauntered back over to them.

Roy gamely got a blood pressure off of the downed lifeguard despite all the noise. He chose to keep out of the conversation wisely.

"All right, already!" the shaken Australian shouted. "Perhaps the sun WAS a little too warm today. Perhaps I didn't see anything. Perhaps.  
I was hallucinating! But I tell you, it was the most realistic hallucination I've ever seen. I mean, I could HEAR her, smell her perfume.."

Mitch narrowed his eyes, shrugged, and mulled over it, licking dry lips.  
Finally he said, "You'd be surprised by what sunstroke can lead you to believe.."

Trevor was incredulous, "Sunstroke? Sunstr--?!" he broke off, miffed.  
"All right, have it your way, guys. I didn't..see..a thing. To Jill, I was playing up to her. To you Mitch, I had a cramp brought on by too much sun! Ok. Fine! I didn't see ANYTHING real at ALL!"

Trevor let his head fall back, ( Matt missed catching it) with a heavy clunk (Roy winced) and folded his arms crossly.  
"Then how do you explain this?" a voice interjected. It was Craig.  
He tossed the object he had found onto Trevor's chest.

It was an exquisite ivory comb encrusted with what could only be myriads of emeralds, rubies and more of those eerie black pearls.

The group was stunned.

Trevor stuttered. "Q-Quit joking with me, guys. This isn't funny."

"Well, neither is this!" Matt said flinging the intricate pearl and seaweed shell necklace to Cole. "We found THAT, around your neck."

Trevor paled at the heavy weight and undeniable reality of the crusting jewels held in this hands.

Mitch extricated the delicate comb from Trevor's numb fingers.  
He gave a low whistle of appreciation. "This has got to be worth millions..Craig, I think we should give Garner Ellerbe and Vince Howard a call."

"Yeah.." he entoned, slinking off to the Venice Beach skate path to do the errand.

Trevor laid back down again, "I-I-I don't feel well all of the sudden.  
uh...This isn't happening to me." and he started shivering even as his rich tan washed into transparency.

Mitch pulled the blanket more snugly around Trevor's shoulders,  
"Whoops, it's shock closing the gap. Don't fret, mate." he soothed.  
"Maybe that girl you saw WAS a mermaid." He laughed heartily as he replaced the fallen resuscitator mask back onto Trevor's face.

Trevor Cole didn't smile. For once, Trevor Cole had nothing to say.

Roy DeSoto picked up his radio and notified Sid in dispatch of the vital signs he had taken and asked for the ETA of the ambulance coming to the beach tarmack parking lot near their lifeguard tower. "Baywatch, I've a male, around 24 years of age.  
Submersion blackout, now conscious with possible associated sun poisoning. Vitals signs are : BP 90/54, Pulse 120. Respirations are normal at 16 on ten liters of O2. Notify the attendants that we may need cooling measures."

##Copy, Baywatch 7. Relaying to Malibu General Dispatch.##

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -  
Photo: Craig Pomeroy swimming.

Photo: Jill Riley running with a rescue can.

Photo : Jill searching underwater for a victim.

Photo : Mitch on a close rescue on the sand.

Photo: Roy DeSoto, on the beach.

Photo: Matt Brody, spotting trouble.

Photo: Trevor Cole, choking on the beach.

Photo: A mermaid girl.

Photo : A lifeguard huddle giving beach care, aerial shot.

*  
From: "Roxy Dee" Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 5:36 pm Subject: Something Fishy..

Hobie was free. It was Saturday; he didn't have to worry about anything at all. No chores, no junior lifeguards.  
nothing except the smooth ribbon of concrete weaving under his lime green roller blades. And about his two new buddies, who were an infuriating fifteen feet in front of him, "Chris! Carly!  
No fair ducking underneath couple's arms. We race the straight way, up the middle!" Hobie sucked in the wind between his teeth and skated like mad down the asphalt path after his two friends.

Carly laughed, doing a 360 around a bikini clad, walkman infested jogger, "What's the matter Hobie? Getting old? Let's go!"

"Yeah!" Chris DeSoto echoed, "Hurry up or we'll miss her!"

"Miss who?" Hobie wheezed as the three of them hit the top landing of the Fifth Street stairs starting the descent down to the beach sand dunes below. They vaulted over the edge....

"AhhhHHHHHH!!!" Their three kid voices sang in terrified treble.

Plastic wheels vibrated down the stone steps, threatening to rattle the neon helmets off of their heads. Rocketing momentum carried the trio bladers down and across the sidewalk flats at the bottom, startling a mob of frisbee players collected along the ocean wall, "Hey, look out!" one of them yelled, "What are ya doing? Trying to kill someone?!"

Hobie sliced up the sharp curve with ease, "That's the idea, mister.."

"Yeahhh!" Carly hooted.

"You guys are only worth ten points, though." Chris added.

"How come only ten?" a blonde stud asked.

Chris howled, "Because you look like a Neanderthal, man. My dad's got better lookin legs than you do."

"Why you--!!"

The brown-headed boy easily dodged a low flying beer can.

Hobie smirked. He was pulling ahead, "Come on you slackers! Get the lead out!!"

The seabirds were getting louder by the second now. Hobie looked down the path in eager anticipation. Deadman's Curve lay ahead and he knew he was going too fast... He couldn't help it, a blood curdling scream got out, "OhhhHHH SHHIIIII---------!"

Fortunately, his skates banked the sharp left through no volition of their own. Hobie felt his right skate clip the leaves off an overgrown border hedge inches away from the retaining wall's steep drop off. He opened his eyes and was amazed to find that he was still alive. Buoyed, Hobie surged ahead. "Ha!" he thought, "Now I'll show them. It's time for the grand finale."

A second flight of stairs neared. Hobie swiveled, backwards,  
"Top this, dudes!" he challenged.

He was airborne.

Chris and Carly gaped as their friend spun once, high in the air. Hobie landed neatly at the bottom. Still grinning, the blonde boy smiled at his own tenacity. He saw that his two pals had chickened out at the last minute, buzzing the stairs nose forward. Hobie Buchannon crowed, "Scud wads! I'm champion of the world!"

Hobie turned ahead, pleased with his success, when the sidewalk ran out.

He had a brief impression of tan sand and blue sky. Twice. Then he hit like a ballistic brick. A huge plume of granite crystals sprayed high into the air. And down in a powdered arch of golden color..

Two teenagers sat up from their towels with a cry, their piled backs festooned in earthen khaki sparkles.

"Bummer, man." Carly called from the safety of the landing.

Chris squeaked in mirth, unable to talk.

Hobie was further humiliated when two highschool aged girls rushed up to him, "Oh!" they fluttered, "Are you ok, little boy?"

Hobie sat up, spitting out sand, "Yeah," he said holding up his detached red helmet, "Saved by five pounds of fiberglass." Hobie faked a moan. The girls huddled in closer. "Do me a favor, huh? Would ya kiss my owie?" he pointed to a scraped knee.

His would be rescuers straightened, "We're not that stupid. Don't press your luck, kid. Why don't you flag down that more attractive lifeguard over there?" They jogged off.

Hobie looked toward the nearest tower with brightening eyes, "Hey, yeah,  
I never thought of that ang--"

A huge Arnold Swartzenegger type was assessing Hobie's status through his binoculars. Hobie shot to his feet and waved his healthiest hand vigorously. The lifeguard turned away.

Carly and Chris died on the sand, "Crashed and burned!"  
"Strung and hung!"  
"Shut up!" Hobie scowled.  
"Ooo, we're quaking." Chris teased.  
Carly looked up from the skate she was unlacing, "Are you two snagwads finished yet? Look, uh, Hobie, when you're done feeling sorry for yourself, she's right over there."

Hobie chucked off his last skate, "Where?"

"Over by the jetty, man. You blind?"

Carly was already light years ahead of the two of them, stepping over the rocks at the foot of the jetty. She began gesticulately wildly,  
"There she is! Come on you guys!!"

Hobie stood, but he didn't move.

"What's the matter, Hobe?" Chris asked.

"I-I can't go out there.."

"Why not?"

"It's too dangerous."

"Awww, who says?"

"My dad does. He says the rocks are loose out there. You could fall in."

"Oh," Chris huffed, an irate hand on a hip, "And for that we're just supposed to forget the whole thing? Not me. Suit yourself."  
The irish boy lugged his skates onto a shoulder and took off for the jetty.

Hobie fidgetted. If he was spotted on the jetty by the lifeguard,  
his dad would probably find out about it. Most likely, he'd be grounded for a whole month! But he really wanted to know who "she" was....

Gingerly, Hobie looked up and down the beach. He saw that his lifeguard sentinel had gone into the water for a workout. And there were no beach patrol trucks in sight... Maybe if he was only out there for a minute.. then immediately back again..

Hobie made up his mind, and ran after his friends.

-  
Garner was eating lunch. A huge chili dog and onions, insisted on spilling all over his shoes. He groaned, trying in vain to stuff two thirs of it into his mouth as he walked the beach. A seabird dove low at his face."Akk! Get away!" Garner only succeeded in losing even more cheese onto his shirt, "Ah, wonderful. Just.."

He heard the sound of truck tires behind him. He turned. It was Craig Pomeroy on pier patrol. With him was Vince Howard.  
The slender lifeguard grinned in recognition. "Hi, Garner. How's it hangin'?" His eyes flickered to the mess running down the policeman's shirt.

"Very funny. Did you see that? I nearly lost an eye to one of those d*mned seagulls!"

Craig shrugged, "Well, you are eating on their beach.. and you do look well fed and kinda slow."

Garner stopped chewing. "What does that supposed to mean?"

"Good pickings. You were easy to steal from."

Vince Howard stifled a chuckle. "A paramedic friend of mine considers them just as foul feathered as you do."

"Glad somebody shares the sentiment. They're an absolute menace!  
They should trade places with the Passenger Pigeons, man,  
and become extinct!"

A commotion drew away their attention. They heard thrashing inside some bushes from behind a retaining wall in one of the beach front backyards. It was followed by furious watch dog growls and sounds of struggle. There was a hollow thud, and suddenly, the frantic barking ending in a keening whine and silence.

Garner instinctively ducked behind Craig's truck. He opened the passenger side door, keeping low, "Something definitely odd's going on over there."

Vince drew out his gun and set it muzzle forward onto the dash board, leaving the safety on. "Let's get under some cover."

Craig nodded, waiting for Garner to get inside of the cab. Then he drove the yellow truck into the shadows beneath some low fronded palm trees a short distance away from the beseiged house.

They all froze as a wooden slated crate dropped right in from of the truck's bumper. Two black trousered legs inched down the wall and a unmasked robber dropped onto the beach sand. The figure's eyes were so intent on the beach crowds that he never noticed the beach truck behind him. Hands picked up the crate and the prowler started creeping down the fence line. Garner motioned Craig to sink down into his seat. Then he too, drew out his gun. "Freeze, mister! Police!"

The intruder whirled and saw Garner shielded behind one truck door, Vince behind he other, and the wink of two badges.

He ran out into the bright sunlight.

Garner flew out of the truck, "He's unarmed! Call it in!" he shouted after putting his gun away. Ellerbee took off after him, motoring powerfully. "Halt! Or I'll shoot!" he said anyway. Vince followed him close on his heels, holstering his weapon as well.

The robber ignored him, gaining speed in spite of having the heavy crate in his arms.

"Aww, man." This was just what Garner hated. An unknown assailant loose in crowds of innocent people. He forced himself to go faster.

"What's the problem?!" Vince shouted to him as they ran side by side together in chasing pursuit.

"A far too common tactic. He's trying to ditch us in the crowd!"

Craig saw them chase onto the sand along the water. He grabbed the C.B mic, "Baywatch! This is Pomeroy! I'm just shy of the seventh street cul de saac. Garner and Vince are in pursuit of a man in a black jump suit. It looks like a robbery in progress. A pet dog was probably killed. Roll police jeeps my way on the double! The suspect's heading north."

"10-4, Craig, " Sid answered, "They're on the way."

Craig spun tires as he went after them. He didn't know what to do except be a visual reference for the coming police units.  
He followed the chase a short distance away, clearing the beach with his lights and siren. Beach flockers fled to either side of the activity with startled cries. Garner felt more confident with each passing second. So far, the robber either had no other weapon, or he wasn't planning on using it. And the man didn't appear to be in the greatest of physical shape either.

The intruder stumbled and grabbed a child. He hurled him into Garner with one arm, holding tightly to the crate with the other. Garner caught the screaming little one and absorbed the impact by rolling with him onto the sand. He sat up cradling the boy's head, checking him over,  
"You're ok, son." Garner ferociously waved Craig on ahead to intercept the burglar. "He's ok. He's ok! Craig! Vince! Go on!"

When Craig saw the tiny boy go down, something inside of him snapped. "..No.." The he saw Garner wave that the child was uninjured and to stay on the man.

He did so, literally. He cranked the sirens to full volume and sped inches away from the man's heels...

Garner was left behind.  
Vince jumped onto the landing of the lifeguard truck, hanging on by the mirror so Craig could get him closer. "Get me closer!  
I'll try to tackle him!"

Up ahead, breathing hard, the running crook saw the red flashing lights up the beach from the other responding police units coming toward him from the north.

He swerved away from the ocean, making for the pedestrian tunnel.

"Oh, no you don't!" Craig cut him off and the robber's hip bounced glancingly off the truck's fender.

It was time to end this chase, once and for all...

"Hang on Vince, I'm about to try something.." he warned the Los Angeles County cop, clinging like a leech, to his passenger door.

-  
Hobie negotiated the last of the salty stones at the end of the jetty.

"There she is!" Carly called in triumph.

Hobie couldn't believe his eyes.

A small, gray dolphin frolicked in the water. Her body was fully covered with steel blue freckles from nose to tail and a light pink flushed her belly. She was quite near the humans, chuckling merrily.

"Close your mouth, Hobe, or you'll gather fruit flies." Chris quipped.

"Huh? I wonder if she's tame."

"Of course she is, Dumbo. Why else would a dolphin like to follow people?" Carly smiled. "When we left her this morning, she hung around by us all the way back to the beach."

"She followed you?"

"Sure. Watch!"

Carly and Chris started down by the water's edge to a ledge traversing the length of the manmade jetty. It's width was very narrow.

"Be careful you guys." Hobie cautioned, as a wave sprayed them all in a cloudy mist.

"We will." Carly said, "But you're going to have to come with us or she won't go along."

Reluctantly, Hobie jumped down to the ledge, clinging to the back wall like glue. The waves made him dizzy.  
"Come on!!" His friends yelled over the sea's crashing din.  
Hobie went. Deep inside, he was thrilling at the nearness of the cavorting animal. She seemed to stick closest to him, chattering to herself all the while.

They made it to the pathway at the foot of the jetty near the concession stands in three minutes.

"Whew," Carly sighed, "I'm thirsty. Let's go get something to drink."

"Yeah!" Chris cheered.

Hobie stopped them with a hand, "Wait a minute." he beamed. "I've got a great idea!"

"What?" came two echoes.

"Let's go get some fish to feed Suzy."

"Why did you name her that?" Chris asked.

"Because I liked it. Well, how about it?"

His two buddies agreed, "Let's do it."

They ran around the concession stand to the bait shop behind it. The three children had barely enough money to buy fifty small mackerels in a styrofoam bucket.

"Must be a good day for fishing, eh, kids?" the baitman laughed, "Gonna catch a big one for sure?"

"We already have." Chris said seriously.

"Oh, yeah? How big?"

All three of them stretchd out their arms as wide as they could reach. "Bigger than THIS!" the blonde haired Carly claimed, as they ran away excitedly.

"Yeah, sure." the fat man mumbled as he turned back to his work, "Everybody's a storyteller these days."

Hobie and his friends had a wonderful time feeding Suzy.  
They were so absorbed in their task, that they failed to notice a shadowy figure sheltering under the concession stand eaves. The figure spoke. "She's being a pig, guys, but I'd go easy on the mackerel. She might get a sore stomach if she overeats."

The children whirled about. The dolphin started a happy chorus and began leaping in huge archs over and over again in a noisy spectacle. Hobie couldn't figure that out.  
Suzy wasn't acting that way before the woman came,  
"Boy, she really seems to know you.." he exclaimed.

The seated woman smiled and began braiding her long blonde hair, "Coincidence, I'm sure. See the ripples next to the sea wall? The dolphin's spotted a school of scalpin there. That's why she's excited."

Carly and Chris were a shy act and stayed by the dolphin.  
Hobie went nearer to the skinny lady. Only then did Hobie see that she was confined to a wheelchair. He didn't ask about it. "What's your name? I'm Hobie Buchannon."

"That's a solid sounding name. Glad to meet you, Hobie.  
I'm Cory Davison."

"Hi. The two rude ones over there are Carly and Chris."

"I know. Carly and I are very acquainted with each other."

Hobie went on eagerly, not really hearing what Cory had just said. "They're the ones who found Suzy..."

The small woman frowned, "Su- Suzy?"

"Yeah, the dolphin. I named her." Hobie clarified.

"That's not her name." Cory said softly.

Hobie didn't quite catch what she said, "Pardon me?"

"Oh, nothing."

Hobie smiled politely and went back to his friends. Chris poked him in the ribs with a discreet elbow, "She's a little on the weird side, wouldn't you say?"

"Her?!" Hobie asked, jerking his head over to Cory.

Chris nodded.

"Nah,..she's just a little preoccupied, that's all." said Hobie. "Something's made her very very sad, I think."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From: Sam Iam lafddispatchery... Date: Wed Feb 16, 2005 11:00 am Subject: A Story To Tell.

Craig decided to get the man into his element. He pulled hard on the beach truck's wheel to the left, forcing the fugitive to either head for the water or get run over by two tons of Chevy truck.

A high wave tripped the robber, making him drop his precious load. Pounds of jewels and museum artifacts poured out onto the sand and kelp piles.

Craig's eyebrows rose, "Just look at that, will you?" he mumbled to Vince as dozens of beachgoers scooped up the glittering booty in greedy handfuls.

Two black and whites burst into the circle of looters,  
"Don't move an inch, people!"

The arrival of the police jeeps froze everyone in their tracks.

The treasure hit the sand musically as people abandoned their finds.

Vince and Craig and a third police unit stayed on the thief's trail,  
keeping track of the man's whereabouts even through the ensuing hubbub of the excited crowds.

Craig timed the waves and drove the truck as far onto the hard pack as he dared.

Quite suddenly, the man dove directly into the sea, heading out.

"Got you!" Craig said as he screeched to a halt, flicking off the siren.

He stepped out of the truck but kept the rover's lights flashing brightly for Baywatch backup to see from the tower.

Garner caught up with them, puffing badly, "He's getting away..."

Craig just smiled. "Not in those clothes he isn't." he sighed in effected boredom, "Shall I go get him?" he asked, putting on the elastic band of his rescue can, "You're too tired to go for a swim."

"Ha. Ha. Just be careful. He may have a knife or something."  
Garner said.

Vince, just stood there, laughing. "I get it. He's as good as sunk.  
Literally."

"You guessed it." said Craig. "I'll be right back."

Pomeroy went in, neatly diving under the huge waves. The man in black, on the other hand, was taking the full force of each wave into his face. The man sputtered, feeling the pull of his weighted clothing , trying to bear him down.

Craig noticed his troubles. "Hey mister!" he shouted across the twenty feet separating them. "You're gonna haveta kick off your boots and pants soon, or you're not gonna make it."

The robber coughed, "I'm doing * choke* fine.. Just stay away, ok?"

"Look, uh, sir, either you can come back to the beach now or I'll get you after you sink in a few minutes."

"Just shut up, lifeboy. I'm trying to concentrate here."

Craig shrugged amicably, "Suit yourself.." He waited patiently, floating easily on his can.

The exhausted robber took in a mouthful of seawater and nearly lost his fight to remain at the surface.

Craig hovered near, pushing his float towards the man, "I think you oughta take this now. You get any more water into your lungs, and you'll end up getting pneumonia for sure."

"I said shut up!" He lunged for Craig, who neatly pinned him in a shoulder tow grip. The robber was effectively immobilized.  
All the fight went out of the man and he went limp, out cold, from emotional stress.

Craig kept the man's head out of the water as he swam him to shore, "Why do you thief guys always do this the hard way? You can't win." He tightened his grip, "Hang on, we're almost there." he said out of pity into the man's ear.

On the beach, a second lifeguard team had seen Craig begin his game of wait and fetch and was now set with a warm blanket for the comatose crook.

Johnny Gage was with them, standing over medical gear.

Craig couldn't help but snicker at his leisurely accomplishment. He would be sure to not let Garner hear the end of it any time soon.  
The lifeguard looked down and felt a surge of compassion for his victim. "I wonder what drove you to steal that stuff?"

On the hot sands, Garner Ellerbe wasn't so nuturing, he just itched to slap on a pair of solid steel handcuffs around his quarry's wrists. "Did ya have ta hurt him at all?" he asked Craig, pausing before he even touched the robber's limp hands.

"Nah, he fainted before any blows were needed." Craig answered.  
"Go ahead and restrain him."

"Simple syncope?" Johnny Gage asked Craig, waiting for the cops with him to search the man for hidden weapons or more jewels from the museum crate.

"Most likely. His pulse's real regular. But he might be a bit bubbly. He was breathing in water more than he was hurtling threats. I'd say a mouthful or two got in."

On cue, the man woke up, rolled over, and promptly puked on the sand.

Gage scrambled backwards a few feet and moved to the man's other side to take a blood pressure. He grinned, "Sir, never ever swim on a full stomach. It'll always come back and bite ya. Didn't your mother ever tell you that?" His next question to the groaning crook was straight to the point, "How are ya doing?"

"Just peachy.. thanks. I want my lawyer. Now!" he gagged.

"You'll get one, mister, have no doubt of that. Can you tell us your name?" asked Vince.

The robber buried his cheek in the dry sand, trying to rub some of the wet sand off his mouth and lips. "I've a right to remain silent.. I've a...*cough* right to an attorney. Anything I say can and will be used against me in a--"

"..court of law. Yeah, yeah. Ok, Johnny, you can go ahead with that oxygen.." said Vince. "I'll get his I.D. from the wallet they just found in the yard next to the home owner's.. *he winked at the others*..dead dog." he said listening to his radio.

"That mutt's not dead!" came the robber's muffled angry reply. "I only tranquilized him with a dart gun." he spat through his oxygen mask.

Vince crouched down near the man's head. "Thanks for the confession, bud. Let's see, evading arrest, assault of a minor, and now ARMED robbery added as an upgrade." he said, writing into his report book with a delighted flourish. "Keep it coming, mac. Honesty's real good for the soul."

The robber clammed up, gritting his teeth hard for flapping his gums too much.

Vince went on, "Craig, they doubly tied up the dog. According to a neighbor, he's a watch dog tracker, who might decide to come after a few pieces of this guy as pay back."

"That's fair enough justice in my book. Turn him loose!" Garner said sharply,  
smiling hard. Then he guffawed loud and long to beat the band.  
"I recognized the crate, boys. I ran by it where it was sitting on the hood of a police jeep, while getting that kid back to his mother. It's from the La Jolla Museum's Atlantis exhibit. Those artifacts were on our photo briefing board at HQ as merchandise to watch out for on the black market and in Venice Beach pawn shops."

"No kidding. Anything missing?" Vince asked him.

"Don't know yet. My boys are going over the sand with metal detectors right now. We'll check that house out later, too,  
for any more stolen items." Garner replied.

Gage cared for the man until the next set of paramedics on the arriving street ambulance took over. "Simple faint. Mild seawater ingestion. Elevated BP. Negative on cardiac symptoms.  
The O2's precautionary for the syncope.." he reported.

Then he stepped back and the robber was carted off.

After the rig's sirens had died away, he turned to Garner, smiling, "Any bet on your lunch still being intact on top of that picnic table? I saw the birds harrassing you from the watch tower."

"You fellas were watching me?" grumbled Garner, trying to be happy.

"What else were we supposed to do? We're firemen trying to learn about your trade. Of course we were watching you, we're supposed to be acting like lifeguards, remember?"

Garner wasn't pleased that anyone saw the reason why his chili spilled down the front of his shirt so he said nothing, concentrating instead on getting the sand out of his shoes, socks and shorts by brushing his hands over them and much body shaking.

Craig crossed his arms over his chest and just waited for the outcome of the current conversation. This was deep into Garner pet peeve territory. ::If Jill Riley were here, she'd think this was funny as h*ll.::

The Los Angeles County firefighter paramedic stopped needling Garner immediately and surprisingly turned politely accommodating.  
"Tell you what. Let Vince and I buy you a replacement lunch.  
We've learned more about beach policing today than we're ever gonna learn at our convention. Maybe you and Craig here can share a few more beach tricks of the trade. Like that herding stunt both of you used to end the chase. Chet Kelly was literally rolling on the floor because he was laughing so hard at the sheer simplicity of it." Johnny smiled. "You should've heard him. The lifeguards thought he was having a down and out coronary." he chuckled.

Craig Pomeroy blinked in utter astonishment when Garner Ellerbe took them up on the offer, chattering animatedly. "O.k. Done. Who's this Chet Kelly fellow?"

"Uhh, you'll like him. Needles worse than I do and he's a master prankster. And he really looks up to authority figures. Cap makes him cower all the time." Johnny related. "I tell you, he'll be the perfect listening audience for all your stories, Sergeant Ellerbe."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From: "Cory Anda" andacoryh... Date: Wed Feb 16, 2005 12:30 pm Subject: Girl Talk and Guy Talk It was busy in the breakroom. Two radios were going at the same time. Most of the male lifeguards were clustered around the coffee machine, listening to the Oakland A's game and they were getting louder by the second.

Shauni McLane turned up the volume on her own radio. It was a news update on the status of the escaped dolphin last seen around Crystal Pier.  
##...........Coast Guard officials lost the marine mammal when the animal disappeared into a coral cove too shallow for the capturing clipper vessel to continue following. ##

"Yeyy! She got away!" Shauni celebrated.

Jill looked up from her Smithsonian magazine, "Hmm?"

"The released dolphin some crazy guys let go from the Naval Institute. It's still free.."

"Oh, oh. oh. ok." Jill sniffed, figuring it out. "It's a shame it won't live for long."

"Won't live f-- Jill, what do you mean?" Shauni asked.

Jill chewed on her reading glasses, "Think about it. All this creature has known is the confines of an eighty by three hundred foot tank. There, it knew no sharks, or fishing nets,  
or even the reality of a large, open area. The sheer size of the sea has got to be overwhelming to the poor thing. Yeah, I'd say the odds are stacked against him."

"Her." Shauni corrected, clearly becoming distraught at her friend's speculations.

"Whatever. Shauni, it sounds like this is really getting to you.  
Maybe you should stop listening to all the new flashes until things settle down."

Shauni sat a little straighter in her chair, "I don't think I'm over reacting. It's just that dolphins are ...so....cute.."

Jill stifled the broad smile threatening to surface, "Uh, huh. And.  
you want to know what uses the Navy might have planned for her in case she ends up back at the Institute?"

"Well, that thought did cross my mind." Shauni admitted.  
Jill relaxed into her seat, once again amazed at people's curiosity over dolphins.

---------------

As a graduate student, Jill Riley had once been as attracted to them. In fact, Jill had spent four years on an exploration vessel traveling the world, filming the friendly animals.

And she had past up one or two marriage proposals because of her rich devotion to her work. Jill liked to think that those failed relationships hadn't effected her; she was wrong. Eventually, Jill linked up with a biology professor at the University of San Diego as a teaching assistant.

One day, Dr. Croft and she were in his office, grading papers, when he suddenly collapsed from a massive heart attack. Jill was horrified.  
She didn't know what to do for him. She had never taken a first aid class in her life. It took only two minutes for CPR trained people to arrive but nothing seemed to help. Dr. Croft was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Jill never forgot that day. She felt herself entirely at fault. She couldn't stop thinking that somehow, her own ineptness could have possibly contributed to her mentor's early death.

She abandoned her job at the college and enrolled herself into every first aid class she could find, vowing never to be caught unprepared in such a situation ever again. Her new schooling took her into the budding paramedical field with Karen, the first female paramedic in Los Angeles,  
and then onto beach lifeguarding.

That had been seven years ago; but she never forgot her time with the dolphins. They were always going to be a part of her, like Professor Croft had once been.

-------------------------------------

Jill Riley smiled at her young friend, "Uses for dolphins,.. oh, let me see now."  
She met Shauni's gaze with a reluctant look, "What do you want first? The good news or the bad news?"

"Give it to me straight, " Shauni breathed, "I can't stand it."

"Well, ... the navy has been known to...strap bombs on their backs..and--"

Shauni sucked in her breath, "Ooo, they don't!" she fervently wished.  
Jill bit her lip, nodding. "Yeah, they do. I once saw some photographs from Pig's Bay, Cuba, where a dolphin took out a passenger ferry liner accidently instead of his target dummy boat. I mean, there was absolutely nothing lef--" she broke off. "I'm sorry, you didn't want to hear that." Jill frowned.

Shauni held up her hands in supplication. "No, no. It's all right.  
I asked for it." She took a huge gulp of her coffee and grimaced;  
it was cold.

Jill was at a loss for words. She opted to remain silent.

Shauni frowned in a sudden thought, "How can our government let this stuff go on? It IS still going on, right?" she answered her own question, "It HAS to be or why else would the Institute be so secretive and their training programs for dolphins.. There's got to be a reason why those activists have been causing trouble over there for so long... Man, there's got to be an easier way than using animals for military research and development."

Eddie Kramer came walking by with a bag of popcorn. He had overheard part of their conversation. He held out the rare snack. "Found a packet that no one else knew about.. Want some?"

Jill dug in eagerly. Eddie noticed Shauni's unusual lack of interest in the buttered morsels, "Shauni?"

She didn't hear him, eyes growing full and moist.

Jill spoke up around a crumbly mouthful. "She's worried about the dolphin."

"Oh, " Eddie nodded. He turned to his fiancee and hugged her from behind, waving the steaming bag under her trembling chin.  
"MMm, don't these look good?" he snatched up a few and held them to her mouth, "Come on, eat me." he said in a tiny cartoon voice, pleading in baby talk, "Eat me, Shauni, plleassse..."

Shauni's face showed a whisper of a grin.

"There you go, " Eddie said in a normal tone, "Got one out of you that time. I love your smiles. I never get sick of them. Come on,  
quit worrying about poor ol' Flipper. She'll soon be safe at home."

"At home just in time to be a living bomb!" Shauni countered.  
Eddie scratched his head in confusion, his attention was already half back onto the Oakland game, "Shauni, don't make such a big deal out of all this. Some animals.. are... are just meant to serve man."

Shauni scoffed, eyes blazing. "As pieces of meat to torture and maim all for the sake of science?"

Eddie covered his mouth in horror. ::Oh, boy.:: he thought. ::Now, I really opened up a can of worms.:: He tried to reiterate, "I didn't mean that. I-I- I'm just as opposed to rabbits and mice being used to test new make up products as ..as..as you are." He smiled at his own reasoning ability, "And I'm sure that there are plenty of roles that dolphins fill that are good, too. Am I right, Jill?"

The blonde woman looked up from a volley ball game on TV, "Hmm?  
Oh, yeah, uh, plenty. The Navy had a dolphin in the sixties, named Tuffy,  
who was actually a deep sea "lifeguard" of sorts. He used to carry a rescue line to divers who became lost in the murk around a sea station and showed them the way back to Sea Lab in just a few minutes. Tuffy was creditted for saving twelve lives."

Shauni brightened measurably. "Really?" she sniffed.

Jill nodded vigorously. "Absolutely."

"Maybe that's what our dolphin does and maybe that's why they want her back so badly. Cause she's so valuable."

"Could be. Could be." Jill touted, happy that Shauni was perking up.

Shaui began eating what was left of Eddie's popcorn. She got a far away look in her eyes. "Yeah, that's what she does.  
She saves lives. Just like me.."

Sitting behind her, Eddie got a little too enthusiastic over the game.  
"Way to go, team! What a way to blow them to smithereens!!"

Shauni's smile paled into a shocked look and she erupted into tearful, sobbing keens.

Jill slugged Eddie with her magazine, "Way to go Mr. Psychology,  
now you've REALLY cheered her up a whole bunch!"

Eddie regarded his co-workers with a genuine dismay and he promptly enveloped Shauni in a deep hug, stroking her hair and murmuring reassurances. "What?! What did I say now?  
Shh, baby. Easy. Don't cry. You know I hate it whenever you do that."

"It's the old social foot in the mouth again, Shauni, so give him some slack. Guys are completely clueless to that genetic blunder because a little of their gray matter was sacrificed solely for the inclusion of more muscles. They know not what they do."  
Jill sighed, in whispered confidentiality to her young rookie lifeguard.

Shauni laughed and nodded, reaching for a kleenix.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

From: "Clairissa Fox" .uk Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 07:53:06 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [EmergencyTheaterLive] The Shirt Trick...

Shauni had made it back to Tower 34 just in the nick of time.  
It was three o'clock on the nose. Eddie had gone on patrol and had left her alone for a short time. She glassed the water with a practiced sweep. The rip current had died to harmless swirls.

The alert, was over. It was easy to relax. Even the swimmers sensed the sea had become calmer, for they laughed and splashed louder than ever among the tide's incoming waves. Shauni scanned for trouble spots and looked to the slate stone jetty in a routine check.

She delighted in what she saw. The errant dolphin was there spouting streams onto three kids at the jetty's foot. A woman in a wheelchair was with them but she remained well away from the edge of the steep rock piles. Shauni noticed that one of the boys was Mitch Buchannon's son, who wasn't supposed to be out by that part of the beach. Shauni shrugged, she didn't know why Hobie wasn't allowed to hand around the jetty neighborhood.  
He was playing it safe enough by staying on the cement causeway.

The blonde lifeguard put on her sunglasses and refocused her attention back to the shallows in front of her tower. She made a mental note to ask Hobie how much fun it was to play with and feed a tamed dolphin. She couldn't help but feel a little envious.  
::Oh, well.:: she thought. ::There'll be time for that later.::

-  
They had run out of fish from their third bucket. Hobie felt that Cory had enjoyed feeding the dolphin more than the rest of them put together. Suzy acted differently towards her. Between mackerels,  
she always returned to a certain spot, just touching Cory's outstretched hand with her head, before racing off again after a tossed fish.

It made him feel a little jealous. Chris and Carly had already become bored and had left for Baywatch HQ. He considered doing the same thing.

"Wait a minute. Want to see something neat?" Cory asked him.

"Yeah, sure."

Cory looked around in her hand bag, not finding something,  
"I wanted to show you a trick that all dolphins can do with a little encouragement. I need something to wrap up one of these rocks down here by my feet."

"You mean this rock?" Hobie asked as he hefted a grapefruit sized chunk of stone.

"Umm. Hmm. " she accepted the boulder. Her grip was surprisingly strong, "Yep. Now I need a piece of cloth to put this in. Find me a scrap, and I'll show you something that'll knock your socks off."

Unceremoniously, Hobie peeled off his shirt and presented it to his new friend.

Cory blinked, "I can't use this. It's going to get wet."

"That's ok, I can always dry it when I skate back home again for dinner."

"All right." The crippled woman bound the stone within Hobie's red striped shirt. When she was through, she tossed the stone into the water beside the dolphin. "Now," she breathed. "Raise an arm over your head and pretend that you're throwing a baseball. Then tell Suzie to fetch the toy. She'll do it."

Hobie was skeptical. He couldn't even believe he handed over his favorite shirt. He figured it was gone for good, so he had nothing further to lose by humoring her and doing what she asked,  
"Fetch, Suzie! Fetch the toy!" He swung an arm out over the water.

Unseen, Cory put something to her mouth and blew.

The dolphin moved.  
And dove deep, disappearing for several seconds.

The sodden mass flipped out to land by Hobie's feet. The dolphin chattered happily.

"Wow! How did she do that?" Hobie said, retrieving his soaking shirt.

"Dolphins are really intelligent animals. Rather like a family dog."  
Cory replied.

"But dogs have to be TRAINED to do tricks." Hobie insisted.

"You've forgotten. Koko is tame."

Hobie spent a minute wringing out his shirt. "I know SHE is, but ..what I want to know is h--?"

A scuffle of thongs on pavement broke his concentration. It was Eddie Kramer, "I see you found the little daredevil everybody's been looking for. She gave the Coast Guard boys quite a chase."

Hobie looked up and grinned, "Yeah.. Cory here says th--"

"Who?"

Hobie looked around. Cory Davison was gone.  
"She was here a minute ago."

Eddie fixed Hobie with an all business glower,  
"Uh, huh, and your shirt just happened to blow into the water way over here by the jetty on its own while you were just roller blading."

"Well, ..ah,...no."

"I'm waiting, then how did it get wet?"

"The dolphin fetched it for me. She's real smart! Er,.. That woman, er, who's gone, ..wrapped my shirt up around a stone and.."

Eddie was unmoved, "Sounds like a line to me..."

"No, really! It's the truth!"

"Hobie..." he warned.

Hobie shut up.

"I thought you were supposed to be a junior lifeguard. You know the dangers out here by the jetty better than anybody. Your dad isn't going to like this."

The remorseful boy looked at his stocking feet. "So you're going to tell him?"

"Maybe," Eddie said, hefting his can onto a shoulder, "Maybe not."

Hobie looked up, a desperate hope in his eyes, "You mean?"

Eddie interrupted him, "Provided that you are out of here in five seconds. I'm counting.. one,.....two...."

Hobie scooped up his skates and made tracks, "I'm gone. Bye, Eddie."  
The boy disappeared instantly.

Eddie shook his head ruefully, "Kids today; they'll do anything."  
He turned toward the sea and was greeted by a treble warble. He crouched down, "Hey ya, girl. Are you going to cause trouble for me?"

The dolphin chirped companionably.

Eddie smiled. "Yeah, well, I think I'll stick around for a little while."

His instincts were right on. It wasn't too long before he was nearly run over by a cluster of excited children, cheering over their discovery of the famous dolphin from the new flashes.  
"Hey, hey, hey. Be careful, " Eddie warned, "Those rocks are slippery." He looked to the hyperactive creature by his feet.  
Then he laughed, "It looks like you're gonna be a pied piper to every kid in the neighborhood."

The marine mammal leaped happily.

"Ok, guess I can stick around and make sure you all stay safe."  
Eddie retreated to an open space to keep an eye on things.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From: Jeremy H skydivingstreakery... Date: Thu Feb 17, 2005 2:44 am Subject: The Dawn Spell

Trevor awoke the next morning in a cold sweat. All night he had dreamed of swirling water and of the beautiful woman in the surf.  
He turned to the clock on his nightstand and found that he had only slept three hours. He laid back down again..

Sleep came next to impossible. Finally, he got up and threw on a flannel shirt and a pair of Levi jeans.

Trevor Cole walked to the beach to listen to the calming sound of the waves.

He sat on a well known rock to watch the newly rising sun. The sky was a brilliant pale red behind him and the seafoam was dashed pink at his feet.  
He looked around him, surprised that so few people were enjoying the dawn,  
as he was.

Trevor heard a splash to his left. With a sudden start, he peered out into the water. He was just in time to see a tail slide under the surface. He ran closer to the waterline, his heart hammering in his chest. ::Not again.:: he thought.

But he saw nothing else. "A sea lion, yeah. That's what I saw." he said aloud.  
His head still hurt from his near drowning two days ago and a cough came up unbidden from deep inside Trevor's lungs. He sat down once more, shivering. The doctor had said Trevor had been very lucky. He had only suffered a mild case of sun poisoning.

It was his fever that had driven him into the water. The Australian suffered another chill, recalling that day. The whole numbing experience still had a very powerful hold on his emotions. There was a dim fear that wasn't ever there before.

The off-duty club lifeguard stood and began to walk, ghosts hounding every step.

He ended up at Crystal Pier. Here, too, was devoid of people. The restaurant at the end of the walkway was still closed. Trevor leaned over a rail and looked deeply into the sea. Warm winds caressed his face, making his eyes water.  
Slowly, a semblance of peace settled gently over him.

He thought he was alone, until he saw her.

A blonde haired woman sat, almost obscured, in one corner of the deck.  
She was staring at the horizon with a far away expression on her face.

"Hello." Trevor smiled.

The woman jolted, a shocked look on her features."Oh, hi!..I- I didn't hear you approach."

"I didn't mean to frighten you, sorry."

The young woman brushed away the hair from her eyes, "You haven't. I just didn't expect to find anyone up so early."

Trevor smiled politely but didn't say anything in return. He rested his forehead on top of his arms propped along the white railing. The headache was back again, and growing.

"I've come to this place every day for the last ten years, and I've never seen anyone so depressed by the beauty of a dawn on the ocean. Want to talk about it?" Cory finally said.

Trevor sighed. "Am I so transparent?"

"Yup."

He regarded this stranger in a new light. She had long hair the color of the purest fire. Her eyes were the greenest he had ever seen. Her oval face was set with a quiet patience and she had wrinkles by her mouth that told of an almost perpetual smile. She was wearing a jacket that matched her eyes and a blue plaid blanket lay, covering her lap.  
Strangely, Trevor found himself spilling out his soul to her. He discovered she was hanging on his every word, intently.  
"....so then I got a clean bill of health and was released from the hospital.  
You know, I still can't figure out who or what I saw out there."

"Maybe your friend Mitch was right.. Perhaps you were seeing things.."  
Cory whispered.

"No chance of that, the other lifeguards found a weird piece of jewelry around my throat when they dragged me out."

The small woman said nothing.

It was beginning to cloud over; California was going to get its share of rain. Trevor looked at the sky. "Say, it's really getting dark. How about I walk you home?"

She looked up with a wry smile.

"What's so funny?" Trevor asked.

"That's going to be a little difficult to do.." she said, folding up her blanket. That's when Trevor Cole realized she was in a wheel chair with her legs locked tight into it. Taken aback, Trevor apologized and offered to push her home."Thanks, but I'll manage. Say, listen. If you ever want to talk again,I'm here this same time just about every morning." She turned to wheel away. Just then, a shaft of sunlight burst through the cloud cover and bathed the both of them in a golden haze.

"Hey, do I know you?" Trevor asked.

But the woman was already out of earshot and blending into the fog as she moved away.

Trevor succumbed to the wishes of his body and sat down once more on his favorite rock to rest a few minutes later. His eyes closed.  
He blinked and a frighteningly vivid hallucination of a wolf, sniffed at his bare toes buried in the sand.

Sweating, Trevor screwed his eyes shut until the growling stopped.  
He finally acknowledged that his fever was back once again to plague his very thoughts.

A truck pulled up along side of him and he snapped from his reverie. He recognized Craig Pomeroy from the public beach and Roy DeSoto, the paramedic from the suburbs who had taken care of him the day he had fallen sick, "Hi.." he ventured.

"How are you feeling today, Trevor?" Craig asked, genuinely concerned for his former charge. "We saw you out here by yourself, looking a little green."

"I'm not going swimming again if that's what you mean." he smiled weakly. He frowned. "Maybe I am still sick.." Trevor looked up with worn eyes. "I imagined I saw something in the water again today."

"No you didn't." said Roy DeSoto, answering easily. "There's a tamed dolphin loose. He's been wreaking havoc on us for three days. People keep drowning themselves to see him."

Trevor had to smile at that.

Craig opened the door of the yellow beach truck. "Come on, How about coming to HQ with us for a cup of piping hot coffee? It looks like it's going to rain any second now."

Trevor felt the first drops fall onto his shoulders. "Sounds like a plan." He stood.  
"Are you sure all the women won't lynch me once I'm there?"

Craig grinned. "Been that much of a pest to the lifeguards, eh?"

Trevor slowly eased himself into the cab seat next to Roy. "Guess I must've been a big one. Say, fellas, on your way here, did you happen to see a blonde haired woman in a wheel chair leaving the pier's beach area?"

"Nope. She a friend?" Roy asked Trevor.

"Nah, I just met her this morning. But I swear to you, I've seen her somewhere before."

"Did you catch her name?" Craig asked. "Maybe I know it."

Trevor frowned. "That's funny... I don't KNOW what her name is." He moaned in frustration. It was one more thing to worry about.

"Don't get worked up about it." Roy soothed. "A few aspirin to lower your sun fever and two cups of caffeine ought to jar your memory. If you'd like, I'll take a look at you to see how you're really doing once we get there."

They drove off.

Behind them, the song of a dolphin mingled with the rain.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: Trevor in the arms of Cory Davison.

Photo: Wheelchair view of a pier and ocean water.

Photo: A wolf running the beach near a man's bare feet.

Photo: Roy and Craig Pomeroy with a beach truck.

*  
From: "Roxy Dee" Date: Thu Feb 17, 2005 10:45 am Subject: Life's Lessons~~

Cory wheeled up the ramp of her apartment. It was the first time she had been home for days. She had stayed with her old friend Linda and helped her dog whelp fifteen Labrador puppies while her daughter Carly was away at junior lifeguards' camp.  
There was an official notice on the door frame. Cory ripped it down with shaking hands. It outlined a search warrant and a copy of the police report telling of the robbery that had occurred.  
And of the drugging of her dog, Kujo.

Cory unlocked the door after reassuring herself that Kujo was fully recovered and well fed. She hurried inside frantically. Inside, she found all of her things were undisturbed, except for the crate. It was missing.

Cory eased herself onto her bed. Her dolphin drawings had been neatly stacked in a pile and a handwritten note from one of the visiting officers lay next to them. It scrawled how much he had admired her artwork how he had personally made sure the house was re-secured with locked windows.

Somehow, that innocent intrusion was nerve wracking. She hugged one sketch tightly to her breast. It was a pastel of the little golden dolphin statue.

Cory's will snapped and she started to cry swollen tears without a sound. The drawing swam before her eyes, "Oh, Koko, they've found me. I-I was going to give all of the treasure back. It..it was wrong to keep it for so long.. I wasn't thinking.. I wasn't !!" Cory beat her dead legs in frustration with hard fists. The pain in her hands finally made her stop.

She lay back down on her pillow, staring deep into the eyes of the dolphin drawing, "You are the answer to all my dreams. Koko, I won't let them take you away from me!"

-  
The rain had completely burned away in the brilliant sunlight.  
Mitch's office glowed in yellow warmth. Mitch Buchannon got up from his filing and twisted the venetian blinds shut.

There was a knock at the door. "Come in.." Mitch invited. He looked up.

A black and white photograph appeared in the open doorway.  
"Look familiar, Mitch?" Garner said as he stepped into the room with Vince Howard.

Mitch made his guess, "Yeah. Isn't that a photo of the jewelry we pulled off of Trevor Cole's neck? And that's the comb Craig found."

"Right on." said Vince. "The stuff is priceless. The comb alone is worth a cool 2.6 million."

"Whoa...." Mitch's boggled. "I wonder who's losing sleep at night over these things."

Garner smiled. "The La Jolla City Cultural Museum. They reported one of their shipping crates as missing earlier this morning."

"No kidding." Mitch said, "Why'd they wait so long to report it?"

"Now that's the interesting part of the story.." replied Vince, shuffling through the arrest folder he had brought with him.

"Try me. Coffee, gentlemen?" he held out a cup to Garner first.  
The ebony policeman shook his head vehemently, "No thanks. You lifeguards keep feeding me enough as it is.." He split a gut, remembering the chase Mitch had only read about. "Ha! Mitch you should have seen Craig pulling out our man, looking as smug as you please."

"You mean the robber who dumped all of his goods out onto the beach while trying to get away from you guys?"

"Umm hmm. Trevor's necklace, comb and that crate belong to a new exhibit opening up next week. The missing artifacts were accidently SENT to the wrong address by courier. Our robber had a serious beef with the UPS system and he figured he'd right things properly, once and for all, on his own." Garner related.

Mitch gawked. "Not the museum curator?!"

"The one and the same." said Vince. "All he had to do was check out the only other address in town that was nearly identical to the museum's own address.  
N. Seventh Street as opposed to S. Seventh Street.. All of the stuff was there except for one thing, a small gold statue of a dolphin."

"And you found the statue in the house."

"Yes," said Garner, "And before you pounce all over me, the search and seizure we did in your district on the beach was legit, although the owner wasn't home at the time. We're still trying to locate her. The residence belongs to a one Cory Davison, an ex-Navy scientist of eight years."

"It gets stranger.. and it's probably nothing. But my boys, Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto treated her daughter, Carly, the other day in school for a near fatal flare of a preexisting medical condition."

"Small world. She ok?"

"Who? The house owner or the daughter?" Garner asked.

"Both."

"They're fine. Carly's at Baywatch right now in camp and the watch tower says that they saw house lights go on over at the Davison house earlier this morning. Cory's finally returned home. At least, she was there then. They haven't seen signs of her since."

"Gonna go talk with her?" Mitch asked. "What does she look like?"

Vince Howard handed him a dossier and a photo of Cory.

"She's beautiful. Are you going to press charges for mail theft?"

"No. During the search, we found a letter she had written to the museum.  
She was going to send the crate back to where it belonged when she was ripped off." Vince said.

Mitch set Cory's photo down onto the corner of his desk.

There was another knock at the door.

"Come in." said Garner and Mitch in stereo. They looked at each other in a mild double take.

Two Coast Guard officials entered. One of them said, "Excuse me, lieutenant?"

"Buchannon." Mitch finished for him, taking his hand in return greeting.  
"What can I do for you?"

"One of our helicopter pilots has sighted an escaped naval dolphin in your area.  
I'm sure you've heard about it."

Garner piped up. "We sure have. He's been running these lifeguards completely ragged."

Mitch agreed wholeheartedly with Garner. "As he so bluntly put it. Yes, we have.  
We've heard and seen the results of your dolphin's encounters especially."

"Yes, sir. It, unfortunately, got away from us. We were wondering whether or not a joint operation could be set up to recapture the animal using our trainers and your lifeguards. You see, we were thinking about using nets and--"

"Look out!"

Hobie Buchannon skated into the room and collided with his father's desk. He came nose to nose with Cory's photograph and read the name typed in bold print at the bottom, "Cory Davison, huh.." he breathed. Then he saw the military men with the Naval Institute's logo all over their uniforms. His heart took a leap.

They were coming for the dolphin! He tried not to show the trepidation on his face.

Mitch was startled. "Hobie? What are you doing here? Can't you see that I'm a little busy right now?"

Hobie was crestfallen, "Gee, dad. I thought we were going to have lunch together with all the firemen, both paramedics and Chris DeSoto."

Mitch edged around the desk, "Excuse me gentlemen. This will only take a moment." He grabbed Hobie by the shoulders and started wheeling his son out the door, "How many times have I told you not to skate inside headquarters? You'll scuff the floor." Mitch smiled politely over his shoulders at his visitors.

Hobie was oblivious to the finer points of etiquette, "You'll never guess what I found yesterday...."

"A dolphin."

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"I'm clairvoyant. Now would you mind getting out of here? Tell Station 51 to take a raincheck. Craig'll be more than happy to take them all on the noon day sand sweep in my place. Besides, he makes a better cross occupational ambassador."

"Sure, no problem. One more thing, dad."

But his father was already half inside the office again. "I don't have time to talk right now, Hobie.."

Hobie called out after him, loudly. "It's about the picture of the lady on your desk. I ran into her a few days ago. I think she's a dolphin trainer who's worked with the escaped dolphin!"

But Mitch wasn't listening anymore. "Later!" came the faint reply.

Hobie shrugged and skated for the front door. He nearly ran into Shauni around the corner.

"Whoa there!" she burbled as she caught him and saved them both a tangled fall to the floor. "Where's the fire?"

"Sorry, Shauni." Hobie wriggled out of her arms and got out of there.

She preceeded on to Mitch's crowded office.

Hobie's voice floated back towards her, "I wouldn't go in there if I were you..." he warned.

::Uh, oh.:: she thought. Another father/son disagreement. She knew well, how those went. They still happened between herself and her OWN dad.

--------------------------------------------

For twenty one years, Shauni had had to butt heads with him.. over everything: Which school she would attend, which cheerleading team to join, what clothes she was to wear. It was all very nauseating. She had absolutely no sense of individuality because Daddy had created her in the image that he wanted to see. Just to appease her own frustrations,  
Shauni started carrying out interests of her own, secretly. Like her modelling.  
::Now that had fit well with Daddy's wishes.:: she thought ironically.  
::Not.:: Shauni didn't even bother to tell him the amount of money she landed as a clothed exotic dancer in a nightclub her senior year in high school.

The real problems began when she had started dating. Every guy had to be a doctor or a lawyer straight out of Yale with a six digit paycheck. ::Daddy was always the perfect matchmaker.:: Shauni frowned.

But it was plain ol' Eddie Kramer who encouraged her to break away from the well do to Mr. McLane's devices to become whomever she wanted to be,  
no matter what. One of the first things they did away from Daddy McLane,  
was to go through lifeguard training together and then she moved out,  
despite a storm of protests. Only the law and the fact that Shauni was already a three years legal adult that kept Daddy McLane from pursuing them and taking her home again with him to the McLane Mansion.

Naturally, Shauni fell in love with Eddie. For he was the first person who had ever respected her as the separate, living, FEELING individual she was who still had hopes and aspirations going on that were very different from those of his own. And he had never, ever stifled her; not even once.

And that made Shauni feel truly loved for the first time in her life.  
::Now the true test'll actually be marrying him and then having children of our own.:: she mused. ::Will we allow our kids the freedom to be themselves too?:: Shauni hoped that she had learned that lesson well enough in time for them.

She smiled, thinking how wonderful it would be if they would turn out as free as Hobie Buchannon seemed to be.

-  
Shauni steeled herself and entered Mitch's ready room.

Four heads in close conference looked up.

"Shauni, what can I do for you?" Mitch piped up.  
She handed him a stack of index cards, "Here are the rescue cards for the last past week. You requested only those ones that involved the tame dolphin in some way."

"Ah, great." Mitch smiled in relief, "Just in time." He took them from her and slapped them into the palms of the highest ranking navy official.  
"Nine people have nearly drown because of your freed dolphin. One of them, was a beach front lifeguard. I'll do anything to get rid of it." he said firmly, his eyes sparkling with anger.

The big man aquiesced, "Ok. Let's get to work then. Here's what I've got outlined so far." and he started to recite his plans coordinating lifeguard clippers and coastline helicopters.

Shauni turned to leave, then she turned back again after a slight hesitation.  
"Uh,, Mitch?"

"Yes?!" he whispered, in barely contained fury.

"I saw Hobie hanging around the jetty neighborhood yesterday."  
she said, thinking she was being protective of the child. "I thought you'd like to know that."

"Hobie? He knows he's not supposed to go there. Where is he?"

Shauni pantomimed rollerblading, shrugged both shoulders, and left.

Mitch really had a hard time concentrating on the schematics of the huge dolphin "safari" operation after that.

The official's voice droned on, "So, would this course of action be acceptable to you, Lieutenant?"

Mitch looked up, "Hmm?"

Garner and Vince nearly choked on their donuts, laughing hard behind his back.

They retreated to the sanctuary of their beach four wheelers before they could destroy any more of Mitch's dignity.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hobie, minus his skates, dejectedly tromped up the ramp leading to Eddie's tower. He slumped wordlessly into the canvas chair next to him.

The older red trunked man mimicked the boy's actions and slumped just as low into his own chair. Hobie was mildy surprised when Eddie didn't ask what was bothering him. In fact, it looked like Eddie was feeling a little down, too.

The boy broke the silence. "Did you lose a swimmer today?"

"Nope." Eddie said, not looking at him. "Lover's quarrel."

"Oh."

Hobie killed a moment by juggling with Eddie's sunglasses,  
binoculars, and a civilian CPR book.

"Neat trick." Eddie said unenthusiastically.

"Thanks."

Pretty soon, Hobie got bored with counting all of the gorgeous babes he saw walking by in front of him. "Wanna talk about your problem?"

"If you talk about yours." Eddie countered. "You first."

"Ok, pretend that you are dad."

"Shoot."

Hobie took in a deep breath, imagining his father's face in front of him. "Dad, you told."

"He did?!.....uh, I mean. I did?"

"Yeah! Two muscleheads are with you now going over the big dolphin hunting trip details!"

Eddie ran some fingers through his hair, "Oooo, rough, uh.. *cough*  
What can I do, son? She has to go. People have gotten themselves in a lot of trouble trying to get closer to her. Would you want to be held responsible for their lives?"

"No."

"Well, I am, Hobie. I have to worry about the thousands of people who come to the beach every day, expecting me and my guards to keep them safe."

Then, a big, almost grown up, eleven year old boy, started to cry.

Eddie startled, pulling his feet down from the tower railing. "Oh, geesh.."  
He put a reluctant hand on Hobie's shoulder. He hated it when kids cried too. He saw at least ten of them every day. He hated it especially when one of them was a close friend. "Aww, Hobe. Show some backbone.  
Just think, she'll be going home soon now and won't be starving anymore."

Hobie's tears flooded anew. "But I wanted mom to see her!!"

"Look, I know how difficult this is for you; when you want something so bad.. that...that ..that you can almost taste it." He nodded encouragingly.

"No you don't. *sob*"

"Sure I do. Listen.." Eddie guided Hobie's head to his red jacketted shoulder and held him close. "When I was nine, I found a puppy that didn't belong to me.  
I had him for two whole months before my dad located his real owners. My dad then told me, that I had to give him up.. That night, they came to take him away.  
I ran to my room and locked the door so I wouldn't hear them come inside the house to get him. When the front door closed for the final time, I couldn't resist peeking out my window. There I saw that the pupply belonged to a little boy, even younger than I was, and that he was crying...because he was so happy to see his Little Lucky again. Later, in school, I kept picturing how many nights that boy must've stayed awake worrying about Lucky and wondering whether or not he'd ever see him again. ...Then I understood, Someone ELSE needed that puppy more than I did and that it was very wrong to keep him apart from those who originally loved him."

Hobie slowly stopped crying and just sat there, nestled in Eddie's arms.

Eddie didn't want to move, "So you see, Hobe. That dolphin has a place where she belongs and it's up to all of us as lifeguards, to take her back there."

Hobie thought hard about the boy, and the puppy, ...and Suzy.

Finally, he found his inner peace.

------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From: "Cassidy Meyers" Date: Thu Feb 17, 2005 10:57 am Subject: The Glow in the Water..

Captain Stanley and the rest of the gang was enjoying toying around the strand in their beach trucks, paired off by twos together and shadowed by trucks, driven each, by a Baywatch team. Stoker was driving the sand hose truck,  
a sort of lifeguard fire jeep that had compressors that could pump out seawater from the ocean and turn it into fire supressant foam from short nozzles anchored onto a frame on top of the yellow truck's rooftop.

They were surprised by how large Baywatch's service area was, ten whole miles running north and south along a narrow stretch of beach.

Soon, the gang stopped at the far north end of HQ territory,  
where the public beach ended and the private neighborhood's began.

Six beach trucks pulled up for lunch near a large effluent storm drain sticking out of a cliff face at the surf line.

"Phew.." Cap complained to Craig, the senior guard who was heading up their roving day trip on the beach. "Do your storm drains always smell this bad?"

Craig Pomeroy shrugged. "That's part of the reason why I brought you and your men out here. We're to collect water samples from that to see what kind of effect it's having on the reef out by the jetty. We typically test for fecal coliform counts, too. Once a week. The last samples of hair collected from surfer fatalities from this spring has shown elevated levels of heavy metals coming from this pipe."

"Yeah, but I'm smelling something different today." said Captain Stanley. "It's more like raw petroleum runoff."

"Really?" asked Craig, "I can't tell. My nose's still plugged up from hitting the water so much pulling people out from around that dolphin yesterday."

"Would you mind if me and my men take in some equipment from the trucks and go check it out?" Cap wondered. "Something's not right here."

"Be my guest. Assessing pollution leaks, aren't exactly, our forte'."  
Pomeroy admitted. "I'll radio in our plans to HQ after we've got lunch grilling. Then, I wanna check out that jetty. There are kids out there again who're ignoring the high sea wave warning signs. Can your pipe inspection wait until after lunch?"

Cap turned his head into the wind appreciatively and was soundly fooled by the ocean's salty tang. "I guess another hour won't hurt any. Let's eat. Mike Stoker's already volunteered to fry the chicken."

Hobie was on the jetty.

He didn't know why he was there, it just turned out that way.  
He was on the storm ledge again, working his way out to sea.

The violent waves made him dizzy, splashing on either side of him.  
He closed his eyes to steady himself. When Hobie reopened them, he saw that he had found what he was looking for.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Mitch walked onto the main deck of Baywatch. He went over to the main duty watch guard at the windows, "Bird eye my son,  
would you? I need to talk with him. Real bad." His foul mood permeated the room.

Every lesser ranked lifeguard tried to disappear behind slates and retaining walls. Mitch split the air. "Have any of you guys seen Hobie?!"

Jill and Trevor Cole looked up from their coffee cups. Jill responded,  
"I saw him at Eddie's tower a half an hour ago. He looked pretty upset."

"Upset? I'll show him upset.." Mitch growled. "Trevor, you're with me.  
Jill, go call Eddie and see if he can spot him, will ya? Hobie's got some explaining to do." He grabbed up the required red rescue can he had to keep with him into his palm. Mitch turned on his walkie talkie and hooked it to his belt, "We'll be on the boulevard, Jill. Buzz me when you find him.  
Come on, Trevor.. Move it!"

A rookie spoke up to no one in particular. "Eee, I feel sorry for Hobie."

"Hobie?" jibed her companion, admirer's hearts in her eyes, "I feel sorry for Trevor.."

Jill spit coffee all over her newspaper.

Trevor had to run to keep up. "Why are you using me as a partner on foot patrol?"

"Because the rest of my men are with a group of firemen on the far side of the beach taking water samples, that's why.."

Mitch didn't even hear the bustle of the crowds whizzing around him on their bikes and skates. His binoculars were glued to his head.

Trevor peeled off his shirt as their fast walking pace drew sweat. "Why are we going to see Hobie?" he asked.

Mitch told him, "Because I just found out that he didn't level with me about being at the jetty a bunch of times this week with his new camp friends. My son's never lied to me this badly before." He jumped when his radio beeped. He answered it, "Riley? Go ahead."

##Eddie said he left to the north about five minutes ago.##

"Ok, thanks. I owe you one." he turned to his companion, "How much do you want to bet he took his friends out to go see that dolphin again?"

"He's spotted it?"

"I'll say, Shauni's said that he even fed the thing fish to keep it around."

They continued toward the jetty neighborhood. Mitch put down his binoculars,  
remembering something. "How are YOU doing? I forgot that you're still on the sick list.." and he slowed down his ferocious walking pace to a crawl, out of deference to Trevor's less than top notch condition.  
"Going back to work soon?"

"Day after tomorrow. I figured that going back to work as soon as I'm cleared will help me get my mind off that woman I saw."

"Still think she was real?" Mitch wondered.

"I don't know. That memory's still a real fuzzy mystery."  
Trevor admitted, wiping sweat off of his brow. He only faintly started puffing, out of breath from their exertions.

This time, both of them jumped when Mitch's radio beeped again.

"Buchannon. Go ahead."

It was Manney, the watch guard in HQ. ##Lieutenant. We've found Hobie.##

"Where?"

##Climbing on the 5th Street Jetty at the beach terminus with Carly Davison and Chris DeSoto..##

Mitch scowled. "That tears it.. I'm gonna kill him.."  
He walked faster.

They were almost there when Garner Ellerbe and Vince Howard flagged them down..

----------------------------------------------------------------

She was there, swimming in the last place Hobie had seen the dolphin. It was a woman with long blonde hair in a shimmering green bathing suit. Her back was to all three of them.

Chris DeSoto went closer to her, "H-Hey there.. H-Have you seen a dolphin around here anywhere? We saw it yesterday and--"

The woman turned to face the three children, a look of surprise on her face. It was Cory Davison!

Carly was shocked. "Mom, you're the one Hobie says the police are looking for?!"

Cory shook her head in desperate denial, moving away from them.  
A sleek dolphin erupted to the surface, blowing powerfully.

The paralyzed woman was sitting on its back!

She cried out. "Oh, no! Carly, take your friends home! This was supposed to be OUR secret!" and she tapped Koko's head with her hand and blew on her whistle, making the dolphin turn around to start heading for deeper water and the concealing late afternoon fog bank that was forming there.

Hobie scrambled along the ledge, trying to keep up with Cory and Koko, "Hey, Cory! Wait a minute! I just want to help you--"

At that moment, a stench of strong fuel from the nearby effluent pipe filled his nose and made him gag. His foot slipped on a slick boulder and he tumbled head first into the deep froth. He had no time to cry out.

"No!" Cory screamed. "Koko! Forward!" She and the other kids tried to grab him but a wave swept him away out of sight. Cory guided Koko nearer to the jetty. The animal swam with great strength over the next wave's crest and down.

But Hobie was gone.

Just then, a nearby street jogger on top of the beach cliff, tossed down a lit cigarette carelessly to dispose of it into the ocean.

Instead of landing on water. It landed inside the drainage pipe.

And ignited it.

A huge explosion ripped out of the five foot high tube of concrete and fire spread on a gushing oil slick spurting out onto the surface of the sea. It surrounded the jetty where the two frightened children were standing. They started screaming.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hey Garner? What's up?" Mitch asked, tossing his can into the air.

Garner puffed as he caught his breath, "I just wanted to tell you that we found out more about Cory Davison. Apparently, she's a dolphin trainer who knows the escaped animal."

Mitch stopped in his tracks, "Hobie KNEW that. He tried to tell me.  
I wouldn't listen." He started moving again. "Hobie's probably with her and the dolphin right now trying to fix things up."

"Great! Perhaps she can help us capture it.." Vince said. The four of them rounded the last bend leading to the overlook.

Trevor went white as a sheet, looking through his binoculars, and stumbled.

"Trevor?" Mitch asked.

Garner and Vince grabbed the Australian's shoulders in support.

"What's wrong? Are you ill again?"

Cole stared blankly ahead, letting the binoculars fall through numb fingers. "It's her.." he pointed to a far distant woman in the water near the jetty. "She's the one I saw in the surf the day I almost drown."

They all beheld what looked for all the world, like a mermaid. Complete with a gray tail.

Then the walkie talkie sound an alert. A swimmer was in trouble somewhere.  
Sid the dispatcher's voice came over the radio. ##To any available unit.  
We've a boy off the jetty. Who's rolling?##

Mitch choked. "Hobie!!" He started running, dropping his radio, using his can as a barrier to protect his legs and face as he slid down through a tangle of bushes choking the length of the sandy cliff's face, to the beach below.

He didn't hear Eddie come over the line, but Garner and Vince did.  
##Truck Two, responding. We're on our way. Baywatch, we see a 10-92 at the same location. Repeat, a land and sea 10-92 in progress at the jetty! Multiple casualties in the water!!##

"A fire?" Trevor gasped, staring down the beachhead where Mitch had hastily descended. "From where? There's nothing but rock and concrete out there!"

"Come on, we'll give you a ride!" shouted Garner and Vince.  
"We'll get there faster than Mitch will, using the four wheelers!"

Without thinking, Trevor Cole scooped up Mitch's abandoned radio and leaped on board Vince's sand bike. "Ok, let's go.."

-  
The whole 51 gang, on the beachhead, flinched and hit the sand when the effluent pipe lit up in their faces with the angry explosion of fire violated fuel. The air over the beach soon filled with burning fuel droplets that rained down onto all of them from far above their heads.

"Into the water! Go.. go ..GO!!" shouted Craig and the other lifeguards.

Chet Kelly shouted when his curly hair caught on fire. A nearby lifeguard tackled him under the water and snuffed it out.

Another lifeguard had grabbed a special navy blue meshed bag full of tiny yellow cylinders before all of them were forced to abandon the six beach trucks as the oil slick fire slithered onto both sand and water, growing dangerously larger by the second.  
Suddenly, a new burning outpouring gush from the pipe cascaded down into the water and a burning sea of flames surged towards all the lifeguards and firemen desperately splashing water over themselves by the shallow end of the jetty.

It encircled them, rushing towards their faces.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the jetty, Carly Davison and Chris DeSoto were terrified out of their minds.

Between them and the safety of land, the entire sea was catching on fire.

"Mom! Swim away! Swim away! It's too dangerous!" shouted Carly. Already, in her head, that odd buzzing aura that always made her mouth go dry and sour, was rising. "Chris.. I think I'm gonna black out! Help me!"

Chris DeSoto leaped into action, tearing his eyes away from the last place he saw Hobie Buchannon go down. "Carly?!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From: Constantinos Bouras Date: Thu Feb 17, 2005 11:49 pm Subject: The Drama Continues

Meanwhile, back at Baywatch HQ, Sid, continued to send additional units to the scene unfolding, and picked up the phone and pushed the speed dial button for L.A.  
County F.D. Dispatch as the force of the explosion rocked the building and knocked him out of his chair.

"What the- ??????" He yelled as he got up and looked out the window, seeing the growing plume of smoke.

At that moment, the radio traffic went into overdrive as all the units in the area reported they were rolling. He pushed the speed dial button on the phone a second time.

##L.A. County F.D. State your emergency.##

The call taker responded. "This is Baywatch HQ, we have a explosion and fire at the 5th Street storm drain, in Malibu.  
Stand by... Ok, we have petroleum products involved,  
that's spread to the ocean. We also have some kids on the jetty there. Give me everything you can!!!!!! We also have reports of lifeguards and the county firefighters that are with us involved!!!!!!!!!"

##Copy, help is rolling.## came the reply as he got the appropriate box number from the sheet and passed the info to the dispatcher at the console. "Better get boat 110 and whatever L.A. City boats they can send." he said.

"Right." was the reply.

##Station 69, Station 65, Station 70, Station 71,  
Station 88 Station 99, Squad 67, Squad 51, Copter 11,  
Boat 110, Boat 310, Battalion 5...Respond to the 5th street storm drain in Malibu for an explosion and fire with people trapped. L.A. County lifeguards are on scene. Time out : 1230.##

##Battalion 5, L.A.##

"Battalion 5."

##Be advised, L.A. City F.D. is sending Boats 2, 3, 5 and 4 to assist. You also have 4 ambulances responding.##

"Battalion 5, 10-4. Start move ups and start the Coast Guard in also with their chopper to assist."

##10-4, Battalion 5.##

Meanwhile, back at the jetty..

Craig turned on the canisters of emergency air and passed them around to the firefighters of engine 51 and the lifeguard escorts, and included a mask.

"Ok guys, this should give us some clean air to breathe, while waiting for the backup to arrive.  
Should last 15 minutes, and there are more in the bag.  
Just time your breathing right and you can make it last longer, just like your SCBA tanks that you wear."

Just as they were preparing to dive under, they heard a scream from the end of the jetty from Chris DeSoto,  
who had spotted them, "HELP!!!!!!! HELP!!!!!!! HELP US PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Look!!! Down there at the end.." Marco yelled. "Isn't that Chris DeSoto???"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From: "Patti or Jeff or Cassidy" Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 12:21:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: Inch by inch.. Second by second..

As they rushed over the sand, Vince and Garner and Trevor could see the lights of Eddie's truck as he sped through the wave splash to join them.

Mitch made for the beach, stripping off his tan uniform as he ran. Now, they could all see that Cory was on the back of a dolphin and that she was screaming for them, "Hurry!! I can't find Hobie! He was right under me..!"

Buchannon backstepped to a halt before the flaring flames,  
not seeing anything but the sea ...on fire.. and Cory. He made his choice and peeled shoes and pants down to his red trunks.  
"Hobie?!" He unraveled the line on his rescue can and slipped into its band. He hit the breakers, swimming in powerful strokes towards her. Mitch's plunge into the water, upset the dolphin.

Koko went wild with fear when fire splashed near her eyes and Cory tumbled off, "Kok-- Come h--" A wave slapped her in the face.  
She started to drown.

On the beach, leaping off the police bike, Trevor saw her fail, too.  
He, too, shed shoes and shirt. He knew that Mitch needed help now,  
for Hobie was nowhere in sight. He dove in.

Garner and Vince snatched up fire extinguishers and fought for clear paths over the smoking sand to the ocean. They saw that the beach was empty of bodies. "Where are they? *cough*" Vince choked over the smoky fumes. "I thought Mitch said all the fire boys would be down here somewhere.."

"They are.. Look!" said Garner, pointing to the water. "But I don't know how much longer they're gonna last. The fire's closing in on them! Hey! Duck under! Now! The fire's coming fast!" he warned them.

Roy Desoto, coughing hard on fumes, shouted towards shore.  
"Vince! Get to Chris! He's holding Carly up. Something's wrong with her!"

"Got it! Now save yourselves!" shouted Howard through the smoke.  
He leaped and jumped over burning sand to get to the jetty and he started running towards the two kneeling dots of white that were the children on the far end, dancing quickly over the rocks as fast as he dared. "L.A. and Baywatch has the whole calvary coming!"  
he said, listening tightly to his radio pressed to his ear.

Johnny Gage let out a shout and forced his own and his partner's heads down into the next wave before Roy had a chance to refill his lungs again. A hissing caressing bubbling sheet of orange skinned over the surface of the water they had just left. Fire was now burning directly above them on a thick oil pool.

Roy DeSoto kicked out of Johnny's arms, trying to head out to sea to outswim the spreading fire, but Johnny grabbed his ankles, holding him in place. He pointed into the murkiness to their right.

Another baywatch lifeguard, wearing a mask of glass, swam over to them and thrust the mouthpieces of two yellow emergency spare air cylinders into their mouths, and hovered there, waiting for them to signal that they were all right and breathing ok.

Roy thought that air had never tasted so good.

He felt an underwater Cap, Chet, Marco and Mike join them,  
with linked arms, similarly sucking on the tiny spare air tanks that the lifeguards had handed out, and one by one, they all gave the guards the ok signal.

Then they began the long submerged swim up current to reach the part of the sea that was away from the fuel fire to get plucked out by the rescue boat.

Two guards stayed with the firemen while four others kicked back towards the jetty to help Mitch and Trevor Cole locate Hobie Buchannon's drowning form.

-  
Mitch kept his eye on the woman. She was having a lot of trouble staying afloat. He was torn between diving to search for Hobie, and helping her. He chose to go for Cory.

"Here! Hang onto the buoy!" he commanded her.

"Can't! Paralyzed..Too tired.." She slipped under.

Mitch took a breath and went down after her, dodging clumps of burning oil. He grabbed her waist and pushed her to the surface.

She sputtered, sucking in huge lungfuls of air, choking on the acrid smoke around them.

"Easy, I got you." he encouraged.

"*choke* Carly! How's Carly?. She seizes whenever she gets too excited...."

Mitch shot a look over to the jetty. "She's still on the rocks. A policeman's there with her, she's still ok." Mitch said as he brought his float in front of them.  
The swirling water was deafening. He agonized over leaving her, "Cory!  
Listen! You've got to try and hang onto this. I've got to go after my son..!"  
He tried to release her but she had no strength left. Mitch couldn't leave her.  
He spun them both around to drive away the fire, searching desperately for any sign of clothing. "Hobie!"

"Wait!" Cory shouted, growing more clear headed with her renewed ability to breathe while in his arms. "Koko can find him." She blew her whistle and the small dolphin surfaced next to them. Cory commanded her. "Koko. Seek! Retrieve the toy!"

Mitch was beside himself, "What are you doing?"

"Just trust me! Koko, now!" she sobbed. She made a sweeping gesture and the dolphin suddenly dove under the burning waves.

Trevor Cole got to them both, seconds later. His hair was singed but he was still very very full of adrenalin. Cole saw that Cory was in pretty fair shape, managing to keep her head above the water despite of her paralysis. "Take her!" Mitch said. He took off the lifeline float and gave it to Cole to use for Cory. "Look for the dolphin!!"

"What?"

"Just do it!" Mitch twisted in a circle in agony, still searching for Hobie.

"I'm so sorry. I did it again.. I'm....s-sorry.." cried Cory.

"Shhh.. Just relax. Let me do all the work. Concentrate on breathing lightly. This smoke can still knock us both out." Trevor hissed.

-  
Photo: Cory drowning.

Photo: A dolphin under the waves.

Photo: Mitch Buchannon grabbing a rescue can.

From: Jeff Seltun Date: Tue Feb 22, 2005 4:03 pm Subject: Beached!

Ten feet away, the dolphin broke the surface of the sea, bearing Hobie in her mouth by his shirt. Trevor spotted them, "Mitch! Over there!"

Mitch got to his son and turned him face up. The boy was limp and unconscious.  
He tried to see if Hobie was breathing, but a wave full of fire suddenly swept over them and he was forced to cover up Hobie's nose and mouth with a hand to keep them submerged until the danger passed. Mitch held his breath, hearing his own heartbeat thud rapidly, waiting for the deadly swell to pass by.

It pushed them nearly to the sharp rocks. He and Hobie burst into the air a few seconds later. Rocks loomed at them horrifically. Without thinking,  
Mitch grabbed onto Koko's close offered dorsal fin and the animal tail kicked them away into some calmer, fire free water.

There was more time between the waves.

Mitch tipped Hobie's head back over the dolphin's flank and listened. Hobie wasn't breathing. After the next wave, Mitch gave him a breath. "Oh, G*d. Breathe!"  
He couldn't tell if Hobie had a heartbeat.

Mitch began to swim to shore, looking behind him for incoming swells or other lifeguards. He found his rhythm, giving Hobie two breaths in between each wave's duck and cover move.

He got him ashore just down beach of the oil fire. Garner helped bear him out of the water, "Is he breathing?"

"No.."

They stretched Hobie out onto the stained hard pack. Garner felt Hobie's neck after the next breath. "He's still got a pulse."

Mitch nodded, continuing his efforts. "Come on, Hobie! Breathe!"

The boy remained still.

Eddie and Shauni arrived and the siren ceased. They skidded to a halt a few feet away from Hobie. They leaped out of the truck, grabbing equipment they would need.

Johnny Gage dropped to his knees with an ambu bag and oxygen. He tapped Mitch on the shoulder. "Ok, Mitch, I've got him.'

Mitch was in unreality. Hobie was going to die if he stopped and all he knew was that someone was now trying to pull him away. He fought back, grabbing at his son's head again.

"Mitch!" Eddie cried out, "Let us use the O2 on him! He needs it!"

Garner dragged his friend away forcefully, using an arm lock to control him, "Listen to Eddie and Johnny. They're going to help Hobie.."

Mitch shook violently and came back to himself. "All right.. I'm all right.. Let me go..."

Garner released him.

Eddie and Johnny Gage worked desperately. Shauni took the boy's hand into her own. "Hobie? Can you hear us? Hobie. Come on, honey.  
Take a breath. You're out of the water.."

They all looked at his fingers. They were motionless; only the ambu bag hissed as Johnny Gage delivered breaths.

Then Hobie squeezed her hand.

-  
Trevor had Cory near the beach. He picked her up and carried her to the sand by Eddie and Shauni's rescue truck. She was coughing violently.  
"You're going to be ok. Both of us are. Concentrate on breathing slowly."  
He laid her down just before he had to lay down himself. He felt Roy DeSoto offer him oxygen even as Captain Stanley gave some to Cory as she blacked out.

Mike Stoker and Chet Kelly helped Vince carry a limp Carly Davison in all their arms, in a line, and then into the clipper boat tethered to the smoking rocks.

Koko leaped over and over again in concern for the humans and for her missing trainer until the boat finally ground itself ashore near where the others were working on Hobie, Cory and Trevor.

Then Koko just lay quietly on the hardpack, squeeing softly on her belly as she watched everything going on.

"She's ok, Roy." said Vince to DeSoto about Carly, the little girl.  
"Just a faint from smoke. No signs of convulsions at all. We gave her some 02 on board the launch."

"Set her down over here. I'll take her vitals as soon as I've taken Cory's. Chris.. nice job keeping Carly from falling into the water.  
I saw the whole thing. You make a pretty good junior lifeguard,  
you know that?"

"Thanks, dad. What happened to you? You're all wet.."

"It's a long story. I'll tell you about it on the way back to Baywatch.  
Can you start getting blankets for anyone who's lying down?  
I'm sure Garner and Vince'll help you before they have to fill out their reports." Roy suggested to his son.

"Ok. I'll get things started." smiled Chris.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gage and Buchannon bustled Hobie onto a backboard after immobilizing his neck with sandbags. Things looked good. Hobie was breathing on his own, taking oxygen well. And he could move all of his limbs. Hobie was loaded onto Eddie's beachtruck for the short trip to Headquarters to await an ambulance while Gage and the others tended to his I.V. starting and crash recovery medication delivery.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You have some hard explaining to do, young lady.." Garner gruffed.

Cory looked up from the sanctuary of her blanket, "Yeah,  
I guess I do." She was lying propped up on an ambulance stretcher.  
Cory felt better. Her head was clear again.

Her daughter, Carly, was sleeping lightly under a lifeguard's careful scrutiny on the passenger bench in a stokes stretcher.

Trevor appeared from around the rig's door. "You?!" Cory gasped.  
"You're the one I saw on that beach that day?.. I didn't mean to get you in trouble. It was just....I was so happy to be swimming again."  
She looked away, uncomfortable.

"With the dolphin?" Roy asked, puzzled, he had already discovered Cory's partially paralyzed state in the few minutes it had taken her to decide to wake up again.

"And a scuba tank. I used to work at the Institute before...."  
Cory looked down at her legs in shame.

Trevor bit his lip from where he was getting some minor burns attended to on his forehead. "Look, it was my fault for getting caught in that rip current. Not yours."

"But I distracted you.."

"It's not your fault!" He said angrily. He pushed away Roy's hands and walked away to deal with the crowd gathering to watch the firemen from 51's fighting the fire with foam alongside the lifeguards they were already familiar with.

Garner fixed her with a stare. "It's about time you were straight with us. What really happened out there? Why did you do all this?"

Cory sighed, caressing her sleeping daughter's damp hair. "After I heard on the radio that Koko had been freed, I went to look for her, with this..." She showed him and Vince Howard the silver chrome recall whistle and chain she clutched tightly in her hands.

Silence stretched for several seconds. Cory shifted, restlessly, and pulled off her oxygen mask. "Officers, you can't know how much I've missed being in the ocean. I had to know that feeling again. Do you understand? With Koko,  
I was free.."

Vince was a study in seriousness. "Talk about Trevor."

"I was feeling good that day. I had found the crate at my doorstep.  
I couldn't believe what I saw inside. Such beautiful things. And the statue of Koko. I wore the comb and necklace to celebrate my first swim since the orca whale accident. I don't get the attentions of many men anymore.  
That's why I teased Trevor. I thought he was cute." she looked away embarrassed.

"Go on." Garner said.

Cory looked up at the brightening sky, "But then he got caught in the current and was swept away. I thought, My G*d, I can't let this man drown. He was almost unconscious when I managed to get a hold of him. I gave him air through my regulator, but he passed out. He looked so beautiful in the water, like an angel.  
Before I knew what I was doing, I put my necklace around his neck and I kissed him.  
Then I saw the lifeguards coming and I pushed him into their arms."

"Why didn't you stay with them?" Ellerbee asked her.

Johnny Gage shoved past Garner. "Excuse me, Sergeant Ellerbee, We've got to go. The boy's already left for the hospital."

Garner relented and so did Vince and they both stepped back as Roy got out and closed the ambulance doors. They saw a last glimpse of glistening green eyes as Cory began to cry for a great many things that would be no more.

"What will happen to her?" Shauni wanted to know. Vince and Garner had forgotten that she was still there. Garner smiled at her. "Oh, I have a sneaking suspicion that the courts will go easy on her."

Vince nodded his head, agreeing with his colleague. "After all, she did help save two lives."

Shauni nodded and together, Roy, the two officers and Johnny Gage watched the manned Malibu paramedic ambulance disappear into the distance up the tarmack.

The firemen and lifeguards didn't know what sounded more mournful,  
Koko's crying distress whistles at being separated once again from Cory Davison, or the wind blowing through the dying waves.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: Mitch diving underwater.

Photo: A child being supported in the water by the belly of a submersed dolphin.

Photo: A lifeguard and his victim being dwarfed by monster waves.

Photo: Closeup of a girl listening to a child swimmer's airway.

Photo: Johnny Gage, soaked to the skin.

Photo: A lifeguard diving off a rescue boat in huge seas.

Photo: Roy soaked to the skin in close up.

Photo: Cory Davison out cold, being breathing checked by hand contact.

Photo : Chris DeSoto, standing in frothy water, dripping.

*  
From: "patti keiper" Date: Tue Feb 22, 2005 6:28 pm Subject: Pure Fishy-ness

Mitch and Hobie were at the zoo along with the whole gang from Station 51.

Dolphins leaped in their enclosed pool. The water danced in the sunlight. They chattered excitedly, begging Hobie for more fish. Mitch hiked up his son so he could more easily reach over the fence. His son threw in a sardine and three dolphins played tag with it.

Hobie grinned. "Wouldn't it be neat if all dolphins were as smart as Koko?"

Mitch laughed and set his son down, "Yeah, it sure would. Maybe the dolphins are the smart ones and we're the ones who need to do all the learning."

"Think so?" wondered Chet Kelly.

"Yeah," said Chris DeSoto. "Aren't their brains larger than ours or something?"

Hobie looked up from the dolphins, "Jill says it's too close to tell."

All nine of them leaned on the rail, watching the light play on the dolphins'  
faces.

Hobie chuckled, reaching up to hug his dad's neck. "You know, I think mom's going to like it here."

"I know she will Hobster, I know she will."

The firefighters of station 51 smiled broadly, recognizing that a small rift had been mended between the burly lifeguard and his son.

Gage grinned. "Hey, Roy.."

DeSoto didn't looked up from the sardines he was feeding the milling hungry mouths in the pool below them. "Yeah.."

"You know what?"

"What.."

"I think we oughta.. sign up for a tour with these Baywatch guys again.  
I never got to hold one of those big red rescue can things and actually use it going after a victim.." Gage frowned.

"You aren't a certified lifeguard.." Roy smirked.

"Well between that nasty drain pipe oil fire, and treating all the drowning cases hauled in by em, I certainly feel like one." he chortled.

"Can you do a pier jump? Or leap out of a hovering Coast Guard helicopter? Or make a 1000 meter swim out and around a reef buoy at full waxing tide?"

"..no.. Roy, that's not the point." Johnny sighed. "The point is..."

Captain Stanley broke into the conversation, nipping the escalating debate in the butt before it was overheard by the Buchannons.  
"..the point is.. that ya had fun. We all did and the best part about it, is that nobody died. Now quit yapping, ya twits, and enjoy yourselves,  
or I'll make a few heads roll. Consider that a ..friendly order from your directly supervising superior. Gimme those fish, Roy, I wanna try that."

Chet's eyes boggled. "Cap, I thought you hated touching fish, or the thought of even looking at one."

"Not any more. Cory Davison's been.. conditioning me with handling Koko. I can even pet her now." smiled Hank.

"Cap, Koko's not a fish, she's a--"

"SHhhh!" Cap said. "Quiet, Chet. You'll ruin all her good hard work getting me over my fish phobia. Don't say it's not working, Kelly.  
Can't you see that I actually have a food fish out by the tail?"

"Quit cheating and open up your eyes, Cap." teased Stoker.

"Give me a minute.. I'm working up to it.. It's just that a sardine's so.  
slimy.."

"So's a fire hose in a brush fire and that's never stopped you.."  
Roy interjected.

"Telling point.." Cap said, cracking one eye open to look at the fish he was moving over the dolphin pool. "Thanks, DeSoto,  
for your vote of confidence."

"Anytime. Sorry for these guys, Cap. I do keep trying to teach them em all the finer points of reverse psychology, but it's kinda hopeless sometimes." Roy smiled.

Gage and Kelly glared in mild irritation at him, but held their tongues,  
because they'd been ordered to.

"Keep at it. I like the thought of that end goal when they'll become as tactful as you about my personal affairs and the odd quirk or two." Hank sniffed.

Marco snuck up behind Cap and said very loudly,  
"BOoO!"

Hank leaped up about six feet, and the fish went flying.  
It was snatched up by a hungry maw in seconds even before it hit the water.

"Lopez! Would you ..CUT..THAT...OUT?! I'm trying to concentrate here...." Cap sighed, catching his breath as he leaned heavily on the zoo railing.

"What, I didn't do anything.... Maybe the Phantom followed us all to the convention."

Cap sighed, deciding to ignore his man, and he bravely reached into Roy's steel bucket for another fish.

Lopez leaned into Roy, "Hey, how was that for a bit of psychology?  
I was thinking it was sort of like how you scare someone to forget about the fact that they're hiccupping..." he whispered.

"Crude.. but I think this situation calls for more ....subtlety.."  
Roy admitted.

"Oh. I'll keep working on it."

Gage started laughing so hard, that he had to sit down.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Mitch Buchannon and Hobie glanced over their shoulders and saw that the Los Angeles County firemen were finally relaxing out of the stress filled tension that they all had when they had first arrived at Baywatch. ::A grueling set of workshifts'll do that to ya. I knew the balm of the ocean would set em all to rights. I'm glad I invited their crew out.  
I think I'll do the same for the other shifts at that station.::

Hobie Buchannon coughed lightly, clearing his still raspy chest and he felt his father's hand grasp his shoulder protectively.  
To reassure Mitch that he was ok, Hobie reached up with a grip of his own and squeezed it affectionately.

To his thoughts, Hobie gave. ::Koko. I'll never forget you.::

In his head, the memory of the dolphin's smile, seemed endless.

FIN

Episode Eighteen..

A Fish Out Of Water

-  
Photo : A dolphin leaping out with a camera mounted on a flipper. Photo: Mitch and Hobie in a heart to heart talk by a railing.  
Photo: Gage brandishing a fish at Cap.  
Photo: Baywatch headquarters front.  
Photo: Baywatch TV logo.

Photo: Emergency TV logo.  
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